Haven Press · 2026
Yes, There Is
A Better Way
A Field Guide to Real-World Systems for a More Human Future
Haven Press · 2026
A Field Guide to Real-World Systems for a More Human Future
You are not failing.
You are not weak.
You are living inside bad design.
A great many people are walking around with a private, unspoken recognition that something is profoundly wrong. They feel it when they buy groceries. They feel it when they look at housing costs. They feel it when they think about their children.
Much of what surrounds us is not the result of nature or inevitability. It is the result of design — design that extracts, centralizes, and makes people dependent on distant institutions, fragile supply chains, and forms of employment that leave them too depleted to build anything better.
This book is not speculative. It is not a manifesto. It is a field guide to real systems that are operating right now — in real climates, with real budgets, under real constraints, with real human beings — and doing better.
It covers eight domains: food, shelter, governance, community, work, land, technology, and political structure. None stand alone. They interlock. And once you can see them as a system, the old world starts to lose some of its hypnotic power.
Plus: Go Deeper resources at the end of every chapter, a full bibliography, and an author note.
Each chapter ends with a curated Go Deeper section — real resources, honest annotations, and a suggested sequence for wherever you're starting from.
This is not a purity fantasy or a dropout manual. It is for people who want to build something real inside the life they already have.
Melissa Chaudhry has spent more than two decades studying, visiting, and participating in functioning alternatives to extractive systems — from permaculture farms and aquaponic greenhouses to worker cooperatives, community land trusts, sociocratic organizations, and sovereign technology networks across multiple countries.
Her engagement with these systems began at fifteen, when she first encountered permaculture design and began to understand that food, shelter, governance, and community were not separate problems but interlocking domains of the same civilizational question.
This is the book she wishes she'd had when she was getting started.
She is a candidate for Congress in Washington's 9th Congressional District, the founder of Haven Press, and the creator of HavenAI.
This is not a comprehensive manual for every domain it touches. It is a field guide. It will orient you, show you where alternatives already exist, and point you toward the resources and communities that can carry you further.
For the price of a meal, you get a map.
If you read this book and genuinely feel it wasn't worth your $17, email [email protected] within 30 days and I'll refund you. No hoops. I'd rather have your honest reaction than your grudging money.