I love this book. Can I say it again? I LOVE THIS BOOK. I have always loved almost anything that Joel Salatin writes or says. Having read a number of his books, you’d think I’d be over him already. I mean, how many times can somebody keep saying basically the same thing over and over again before you get tired of hearing it? Well, it hasn’t happened yet for me with Joel.
GIVEAWAY: The Town That Food Saved
The Town That Food Saved initially sounds like some pie-in-the-sky, feel-good movie airing on a local television station during a nap-filled Sunday afternoon. Local food is the hero, sweeping in to rescue some down-in-the-dumps town full of aging subsistence-level farms and boarded-up granite mines. Inspiring? Sure. Realistic? No. Thankfully, that’s not the story the book actually portrays.
Instead we see a complex narrative unfold concerning the small town, Hardwick, Vermont — a narrative not fraught with easy answers, but which explores the real life ins-and-outs of a growing local food economy.
The Raw Milk Revolution
Maybe you don’t know who David Gumpert is, but I’d be willing to bet money you know who Joel Salatin is. In addition to being a self-described Christian environmentalist libertarian lunatic farmer, my hero, and the author of one of my most controversial guest posts, Joel Salatin also loaned his pen out to David Gumpert by writing the foreword to Mr. Gumpert’s recent book, The Raw Milk Revolution.
That’s quite a shining endorsement. David Gumpert is a journalist focusing in the area of health care, and he’s been blogging at The Complete Patient for nearly 4 years. His book chronicles the growing battle between the industrialized food system (propped up by the government and law enforcement personnel) and the local food movement (represented by devotees to raw milk). It’s an eye opener.
Healing Our Children by Ramiel Nagel
When Rami Nagel sent me a review copy of his newest book, Healing Our Children, I thought I was in for another version of Nina Planck’s Real Food For Mother And Baby. Then I started reading it.
While it is true that Ramiel shares many of the same ideas about nutrition as Nina Planck, his approach to that information is wildly different. One Amazon reviewer summed up her thoughts on this book like this: “Yikes! Wacky Hippies Co-Opt Weston A. Price.” That’s not a bad summary.
The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved By Sandor Ellix Katz
A great follow-up book to Wild Fermentation (A Food Renegade Must Read), Sandor Ellix Katz’s The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved takes a look at the cutting edge of food activism. While traveling the States leading workshops on the craft of making sauerkraut, Sandor met people participating in what he calls “underground food movements.”
In short, he met Food Renegades. And lots of them. These are the people struggling to keep food traditions alive, the people finding their way out of the corporate/industrial food maze and taking control of their own health and nutrition.
Real Food For Mother And Baby by Nina Planck
Contrary to most books serving up nutritional advice for expectant mothers, Nina Planck’s newest book, Real Food For Mother And Baby, offers incredibly practical counsel. She writes as a real mom would, as someone sharing her own personal story about fertility, pregnancy, and her baby’s first foods. She writes about her struggles, about second-guessing herself, about what brought her to tears of frustration. In short, she was accessible both as a person and as a self-described “nutrition geek.”