Beyond being a big book of useful stuff, Whole Earth Catalog carried in it a variety of tips, useful knowledge, recipes, methodologies, and even recommendations for traveling to Nepal. 1974's Last Whole Earth Catalog even ran a novella across its pages in small chunks, a story titled "Divine Right's Trip" by Gurney Norman, that described a young counterculture man's physical trip from California to Kentucky and his spiritual journey from aimless wanderer to working his own farm. In no small part Whole Earth's goal was to help people make that same transformation, to shift from the wastefulness of contemporary society and live comfortably using their own hands and minds.

Whole Earth contained a number of pieces unrelated to catalog sales. An essay from Wendell Berry - "Think Small" - called out what he saw as failings of the Civil Rights and Anti-war movements and proposed his ideas for preventing such failings in the environmental movement. Ken Kesey - proponent of LSD and a friend of Stuewart Brand from his Merry Prankster days in San Francisco - contributed a piece he wrote while being processed after one of his arrests. At the time Brand was fascinated with the ideas of Buckminster Fuller and dedicated an entire section of Whole Earth Catalog to his ideas on large-scale systems (and, of course, where to obtain several of his books). From a more practical standpoint, Whole Earth also printed sections on vegetarianism (with cookbooks), methodologies for dealing with the law in various forms, and even how to make cheese.