The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket

The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table

Tracie McMillan · 330 pages

"In 2009 McMillan embarked on a groundbreaking undercover journey to see what it takes to eat well in America. For nearly a year, she worked, ate, and lived alongside the working poor to examine how Americans eat when price matters"--Jacket.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

Jennifer 8. Lee · 314 pages

If you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of

Not On The Label

Felicity Lawrence · 344 pages

A shocking and highly readable expose of the state of the food production industry in Britain today. Felicity Lawrence will take some of the most popular foods we eat at home to show how the food industry in Britain causes ill health, environmental damage, urban blight, starving smallholders in Africa and Asia, and illegal labourers smuggled and exploited in Britain.

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,

Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

Siddharth Kara · 320 pages

"Across eighteen countries and six continents, Siddharth Kara has witnessed firsthand the sale of human beings into slavery, interviewed more than five hundred slaves of all kinds, and confronted some of those who trafficked and exploited them. In this book he draws on his background in finance and law to provide the first ever business and economic analysis of contemporary slavery worldwide, focu

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Eric Schlosser · 383 pages

To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar Amerca. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism ab

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Michael Pollan · 244 pages

What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, the well-considered answers he provides to the que

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine

Benjamin Wallace · 336 pages

It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. In 1985, a 1787 bottle of Cha^teau Lafite Bordeaux--one of a cache unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson--sold at auction for $156,000. The discoverer of the bottle was pop-band manager turned wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, who had a knack for finding extremely old and exquisite wines. But rumors soon a

China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa

Howard W. French · 304 pages

The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India

Siddhartha Deb · 253 pages

Siddhartha Deb grew up in a remote town in the northeastern hills of India and made his way to the United States via a fellowship at Columbia. Six years after leaving home, he returned as an undercover reporter forThe Guardian, working at a call center in Delhi in 2004, a time when globalization was fast proceeding and Thomas L. Friedman declared the world flat. Deb's experience interviewing the c

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

Elizabeth L. Cline · 258 pages

Evaluates the costs of low-priced clothing while tracing the author's own transformation to a conscientious shopper, a journey during which she visited a garment factory, learned to resole shoes, and shopped for local, sustainable clothing.

Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit

Barry Estabrook · 256 pages

Investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry and the price we pay as a society when we take taste and thought out of our food purchases.

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

Evan Osnos · 416 pages

The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption

Kathryn Joyce · 352 pages

"Adoption has long been enmeshed in the politics of abortion. But as award-winning journalist Kathryn Joyce makes clear in The Child Catchers, adoption has lately become entangled in the conservative Christian agenda. To tens of millions of evangelicals, adoption has become a new front in the culture wars: a test of "pro-life" bonafides, a way to reinvent compassionate conservatism on the global s

Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food

Eric Schlosser, Charles Wilson · 304 pages

A behind-the-scenes look at the fast food industry. This book reveals the truth about what lurks between those sesame seed buns, what a chicken "nugget" really is, and how the fast food industry has been feeding off children for generations. The coauthor is Charles Wilson.

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Michael Moss · 480 pages

Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal

Tristram Stuart · 480 pages

In "Waste," Stuart points out that farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets, and consumers in North America and Europe discard between 30 and 50 percent of their food supplies--enough to feed all the world's hungry three times over. Traveling from China to New York, from Pakistan to Japan, Stuart encounters grotesque examples of profligacy--but also inspiring innovations--to the global food crisis.

Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking

Lydia Cacho · 271 pages

Illegal, inhuman, and impervious to recession, there is one trade that continues to thrive, just out of sight. The international sex trade criss-crosses the entire globe, a sinister network made up of criminal masterminds, local handlers, corrupt policemen, willfully blind politicians, eager consumers, and countless hapless women and children. In this ground-breaking work of investigative reportin

Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It

Larry Olmsted · 318 pages

"You've seen the headlines: Parmesan cheese made from wood pulp. Lobster rolls containing no lobster at all. Extra-virgin olive oil that isn't. So many fake foods are in our supermarkets, our restaurants, and our kitchen cabinets that it's hard to know what we're eating anymore. In Real Food/Fake Food, award-winning journalist Larry Olmsted convinces us why real food matters and empowers consumers

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Barbara Ehrenreich · 248 pages

"Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed." "Bait and Switch highlights the people who've done everything right - gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive resumes - yet have become repeatedly vulnerable t

A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery

E. Benjamin Skinner · 366 pages

There are more slaves in the world today than at any time in history. In this account of contemporary slavery, journalist Skinner travels around the globe to personally tell stories that need to be told--and heard. With years of reporting in such places as Haiti, Sudan, India, Eastern Europe, The Netherlands, and, yes, even suburban America, Skinner has produced a moving reportage on one of the gr

Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

Tom Mueller · 238 pages

For millennia, fresh olive oil has been one of life's necessities, not just as food but also as medicine, a beauty aid, and a vital element of religious ritual. Today's researchers are continuing to confirm the remarkable, life giving properties of true extra-virgin, and "extra-virgin Italian" has become the highest standard of quality. But what if this symbol of purity has become deeply corrupt?

The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business

Christopher Leonard · 384 pages

In The Meat Racket, investigative reporter Christopher Leonard delivers the first-ever account of how a handful of companies have seized the nation's meat supply. He shows how they built a system that puts farmers on the edge of bankruptcy, charges high prices to consumers, and returns the industry to the shape it had in the 1900s before the meat monopolists were broken up. At the dawn of the 21st

Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat

Philip Lymbery, Isabel Oakeshott · 448 pages

Farmageddon is a fascinating and terrifying investigative journey behind the closed doors of a runaway industry across the world - from the UK, Europe and the USA, to China, Argentina, Peru and Mexico. It is both a wake-up call to change our current food production and eating practices and an attempt to find a way to a better farming future.--COVER.