Category: Reviews

Drawing on over 10 years of travel and research to document food on the brink of disappearing, BBC food journalist Dan Saladino created the captivating book “Eating to Extinction.” Divided into 10 sections of food types (including cereal, vegetable, cheese and alcohol), Saladino delves into the threats to food around the world. The emergent patterns

There are many ways people come to herbalism and become connected to the healing power of plants. Karen M. Rose, author of “The Art & Practice of Spiritual Herbalism: Transform, Heal, & Remember with the Power of Plants and Ancestral Medicine,” comes from a long line of “Roses,” a perfect last name for an herbalist.

Liz Carlisle could have written a book on regenerative agriculture that extolled the virtues of intensive grazing and no-till. She could have focused on practices like cover cropping and polyculture, and how they can lead to carbon sequestration and increased soil organic matter. That was her intent, after all: “to pin down the potential for

If you think you know Monsanto — the biochemical company that has become synonymous with genetically modified monoculture and toxic herbicides — think again. Bartow J. Elmore’s “Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future” is a history of the corporation, its blunders and how it became the black hat of modern agriculture. Elmore’s detailed

Assembled around five back-to-the-land movements from the 1840s into the 2010s and the pandemic years, “Foodtopia” is an exploration of utopian experiments that use food as a means to create a more just and equal world. Woven together with the common thread of food as a means to a better reality, Kelley presents the reader

Juliet Blankespoor first made a name for herself within the herbal community in founding the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine in Asheville, North Carolina, a formerly in-person school that now exists fully online. She wrote a multifarious blog for many years, but “The Healing Garden: Cultivating & Handcrafting Herbal Remedies” is her first book. This

The secret to a healthy garden begins with the soil. “There are no short cuts,” writes Sally Morgan, who warns that it takes time to build healthy soil. But don’t worry, Morgan shows how gardeners can work with nature to build their soil, grow healthy plants and decrease the populations of pests and diseases. And

“Sandor Katz’s Fermentation Journeys” brings us around the world, from the tropics to the Arctic, where the bestselling author’s notoriety leads him down back paths and opens doors to places, people and fermenting practices that most travelers do not get to experience. Reading this book filled me with a strong sense of interconnectedness, bringing to

“Toxic Legacy” isn’t Stephen King’s latest bestseller, but it may keep you up at night. Though complex at times, this biochemical treatise is convincing that glyphosate, an active ingredient in most Roundup herbicides, is poisoning all of us right this very second. Stephanie Seneff is a somewhat unconventional voice on the topic of toxicity. She

“Let’s have tea. Let’s have galaxies, let’s have earthworms, let’s have sorrow and tenderness, and let us pour and receive the bottomless mercy that life has for us in our forgiveness, our failures, our longings. In return, let us forgive the world for being the world, let us allow all things to be forgiven, to