Category: Reviews

“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

Solid municipal waste, much of which is composed of plastic, is on the rise across the globe. Estimates indicate that since the mid-1900s, humans have produced over 8.3 billion metric tons of non-recycled petrochemical-based plastic. Worse still, 76% of that plastic is believed to have been used only once or twice before being discarded. In

“The Ecological Gardener” is a great book for anyone who wants to think beyond the vegetable patch, beyond the flower beds and the mowed lawn. Matt Rees-Warren encourages gardeners to embrace the larger landscape and reimagine how our gardening might help mitigate climate change. Is it possible to do that? To reduce carbon one compost

Corn isn’t typically considered a charismatic crop. For many, it invokes images of Midwestern monoculture, starchy syrups and corn on the cob.  As “Endangered Maize” establishes, though, the efforts to preserve the biodiversity of corn over the last two centuries tells a familiar story about modern agriculture: crop diversity has shrunk in the face of

Jolie loves strawberries so much that she would eat them every day if she could. Her solution: to grow her own. But growing berries takes a lot of work, and mom and dad suggest she wait until she’s older. Jolie doesn’t want to wait. She wants to be “older” now! So she scribbles age lines

When you imagine a farmer, what comes to mind? For many, it’s a white man in plaid and jeans in an expansive field with a tractor. Author Natalie Baszile begins “We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy” with a similar image, describing a mural meant to be a tribute to

Gretchen Legler says some people may describe her as “woodsqueer,” a somewhat obscure term for those “who’d been in the woods too long.” Her latest book, “Woodsqueer: Crafting a Sustainable Rural Life,” embraces the moniker wholeheartedly, with an emphasis on both “woods” and “queer.” Part memoir and part natural history, this place-based collection of essays

Somehow, I naively thought that forest gardening involved growing crops in the forest. While people do harvest nuts, fruits and herbs from the woods, “forest gardening” has come to mean gardening “like a forest.” In “The Home-Scale Forest Garden,” Dani Baker shows how to design a multi-layered garden of edible plants that mimics the ecology