Category: Reviews

Sometimes when you pick up a book or read a post claiming to be a “guide,” it can fall short of being a functional step-by-step instruction manual on the actual mechanics of the topic. This is not the case with “The Vertical Veg Guide to Container Gardening” by Mark Ridsdill Smith. The book is replete

Whether you’re a gardener, a farmer, or just an eater of food, the production of food is going to change as the climate changes. We’re seeing it already — droughts, fires, extreme heat, torrential rains, changes in habitats, catastrophic weather events that happen regularly. There are depleting soils, more poisons like PFAS in the environment,

It was only by accident that artists Allyson Levy and Scott Serrano created Hortus Arboretum & Botanical Gardens in Stone Ridge, New York, just two hours north of the city. In 1999 they moved to the 3-acre property and immediately began acquiring plants that could be used for their botanically inspired artwork. In their quest

Alan Bergo’s relationship with food and foraging is influenced by both his background in the culinary arts (he’s worked in high-end kitchens across the Twin Cities) and his insatiable curiosity about the world around him. In “The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora” — which, according to Bergo’s well-known blog, is set to be the first

“Iwígara: American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science,” by Enrique Salmón, focuses on 80 plants that are culturally relevant to North American native people. In the introduction of the book Salmón explains what the concept of Iwígara is in his Rarámuri tribe, and how the Rarámuri see themselves as part of an “extended ecological family,” setting

What would a just food system look like? This question is at the heart of Mark Bittman’s newest book, “Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal.” Before he attempts an answer, Bittman brings readers on an epic journey through the history of food, from ancient Mesopotamia to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

“All That She Carried” by Tiya Miles humanizes captive Black people living in “the tear of humanity that was chattel slavery.” Set primarily in the antebellum south, Miles gives readers a tour of the plantations of white enslavers in South Carolina, detailing how infrastructure and society were shaped by the vast fields of rice and

As a mother I have watched our youngest generation be shaped by the climate crisis. I have witnessed climate anxiety overwhelm my children and their friends, listened to them share concerns that have kept them up at night, and done my best to field questions about the end of the world. At times, the dread

Apple growers and historians in Maine have been given a gift, that of knowing their apple history perhaps better than any other state in this country. Frederick Charles Bradford (1887-1950), the author and compiler of this seminal work as a thesis submitted to the University of Maine in 1911, has brought to life the trials

Step aside beloved beauties of the bug world. The time has arrived for the oft maligned fly’s moment in the spotlight. Leave your butterfly and honeybee love at the door: it’s all flesh flies and fungus gnats in the pages ahead. “13 Ways to Eat a Fly” is a reverse counting book for little ones