Today, there are plenty of earth dwellings in many parts of the world that are centuries old. Man discovered that the earth homes that have lasted best were in areas where not much rain falls. A wet climate is the worst enemy of an earth house.. Today, with the advances made in the science of soil mechanics, what soils will do under many different conditions can be predicted and controlled. It is possible, even with little skill, today to build beautiful, inexpensive and durable homes using the oldest construction material known, the earth around us. Strangely enough, it is the scientific road builders who have learned most about the way many kinds of soil will behave under a wide variety of conditions. These scientists know, for example, how to take soils that for centuries were considered useless for anything and, by combining them with materials called stabilizers, make them into mixtures that are excellent for earth construction. As in most important discoveries, this new knowledge, much of it learned since World War II, was found by work done in laboratories by highly trained technical men. It now remains to make these new techniques available to the people who need them most and can use them to their advantage: the many people in the world who need good, lasting homes and who cannot afford to spend a lot of money to buy them, or who do not have access to modern manufactured materials. Earth is everywhere. This small book tries to take the newest techniques developed in modern soil mechanics and put them into simple terms so that almost anyone, anywhere, can have the benefit of the great amount of work that has been done by the scientists.