The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan · 450 pages

What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't—which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, Camille Kingsolver · 384 pages

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat."As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begi

Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally

Alisa Smith, J.B. MacKinnon · 272 pages

Happy Snacking, Don't Die!: Foraging and Vegan Recipes with Black Forager (A Cookbook)

Alexis Nikole Nelson · 272 pages

Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly

James McWilliams · 273 pages

We suffer today from food anxiety, bombarded as we are with confusing messages about how to eat an ethical diet. Should we eat locally? Is organic really better for the environment? Can genetically modified foods be good for you? JUST FOOD does for fresh food what Fast Food Nation (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) did for fast food, challenging conventional views, and cutting through layers of myth and mis

Eating Animals

Jonathan Safran Foer · 341 pages

After spending much of his life shifting between various omnivore and herbivore eating habits, the author presents a thought provoking look at why and how humans choose their diets. Delivering the pros and cons of eating meat, he invites readers on an insightful exploration into the many facets of food. Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir, and his own detective work,

The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

Julia Butterfly Hill · 256 pages

The woman who spent more than two years living in Luna, a thousand-year-old redwood in Humboldt County, California, tells the story of protecting old growth forests, siege by opponents, threatening weather, and unexpected support from around the world.

The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light

Paul Bogard · 337 pages

Describes how ever-present, modern artificial lights have changed the way humans experience darkness and bemoans the fact that the primal dark sky can no longer influence science and art.

Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love

Simran Sethi · 350 pages

"Bread, Wine, and Chocolate, part journey to six continents in pursuit of delicious and endangered tastes, part investigation of the loss of biodiversity from soil to plate, tells the story of what we are losing, how we are losing it, and the inspiring people and places that are bringing back the foods we love. Award-winning journalist Simran Sethi travels from wild coffee forests in Ethiopian to

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Elizabeth Kolbert · 336 pages

From the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe, a powerful and important work about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a compelling account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes.

The Seasons on Henry's Farm: A Year of Food and Life on a Sustainable Farm

Terra Brockman · 310 pages

"Week-by-week chronicle of life on an organic farm, with culinary, historical, scientific, and literary reflections and seasonal recipes"--Provided by publisher.

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks

Terry Tempest Williams · 416 pages

"A personal, lyrical, and idiosyncratic ode to our national parks"-- "For years, America's national parks have provided public breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why close to 300 million people visit the parks each year. Now, to honor the centennial of the National Park Service, Terry Tempest Williams, the author of the beloved memoir When Women W

Lab Girl

Hope Jahren · 408 pages

An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also so much more. Lab

Desert Solitaire

Edward Abbey · 270 pages

An account of the author's experiences, observations, and reflections as a seasonal park ranger in southeast Utah. When Desert Solitaire was first published in 1968, it became the focus of a nationwide cult. Rude and sensitive. Thought-provoking and mystical. Angry and loving. Both Abbey and this book are all of these and more. Here, the legendary author of The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey's Road an

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front

Joel Salatin · 345 pages

The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love

Kristin Kimball · 276 pages

When Manhattan writer Kristin Kimball arrived to interview an organic farmer called Mark on a Pennsylvanian farm, she was wearing high heels and a crisp white shirt and had been vegetarian for thirteen years. That evening, she found herself helping him to slaughter a pig. By the next morning she was tucking into sizzling homemade sausages drizzled with warm maple syrup, and within a few months she

A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round River

Aldo Leopold · 269 pages

First published in 1949 and praised in The New York Times Book Review as a trenchant book, full of vigor and bite, A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for Americas relationship to the land. Written with an unparalleled understanding of the ways of nature, the book includes a section on the monthly changes of the

Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food

Paul Greenberg · 284 pages

In the majority of cultures around earth, many have at least one species of fish that is a staple of their diet, or holds a religious, spiritual, or philosophical meaning. In the book, Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg, the author supports an explanation as to why we, as humans, have such a love affair with not only fish but the open ocean. Mr. Greenberg, who is a dev

The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River

Richard White · 130 pages

In The Organic Machine, Richard White, a distinguished historian and leading scholar of the American West, explores the intimate relationship between nature and mankind along the Columbia River. Working on the cutting edge of environmental and social history, White demonstrates how, over the centuries, both native peoples and settlers have continually remade the river, treating it as a machine des

Growing a Farmer

Kurt Timmermeister · 336 pages

A former Seattle urbanite and restaurateur describes the realities of establishing a profitable farm on Vashon Island, his growing awareness of the relationship between food and its sources, and the specifics of making cheese, raising cows, and slaughtering pigs.

On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, Author of Silent Spring

William Souder · 496 pages

Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants

Jane Goodall, Gail Hudson · 426 pages

"Renowned naturalist and bestselling author Jane Goodall examines the critical role that trees and plants play in our world"--Provided by the publisher.

Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer

A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation espouses having an understanding and appreciation of plants and animals.

Our Only World: Ten Essays

Wendell Berry · 187 pages

"In this new collection of [ten] essays, Berry confronts head-on the necessity of clear thinking and direct action. Never one to ignore the present challenge, he understands that only clearly stated questions support the understanding their answers require. For more than fifty years we've had no better spokesman and no more eloquent advocate for the planet, for our families, and for the future of