A provocative, intelligent survey of the many complexities, moral and practical, of bringing food to our plates.
A sometimes contrarian philosophy of food and its creation and consumption.
By British philosopher and journalist Baggini’s account, there are food systems, and then there is the “sphere of human existence which they govern, guide and control.” This sphere he calls the “food world,” “an organic ecosystem, in which every part is connected to every other.” Within this ecosystem, more than a quarter of the people on Earth lack nutritious food in quantities sufficient to sustain them—though, as Baggini notes, a parallel if counterintuitive development is the rise in obesity rates in about equal number, and both hunger and obesity speak to “our broken food world.” In proposing repairs, Baggini is refreshingly adaptable, and though he risks courting purist rancor, he advocates a mixed diet that makes use of whatever is fresh and seasonal with whatever is available, which includes meat (“Is disgust at meat eating really a sign of more civilised society or simply a mark of one that has become detached from the realities of life and death?”). Baggini also adds wrinkles to accepted narratives: as gauged by the biodiversity of gut flora, one good measure of food health, the problem is not so much that the gatherers and hunters are better off than those settled in urban agricultural societies as that processed food, which we moderns tend to rely on, is a guaranteed detriment to a good “gut microbiome.” Baggini also suggests that organic production is good but not always possible, that food governance is a matter of national interest and thus not to be left to the “free market,” and that technology (including lab-grown meat) is not to be shunned in the quest to feed the world.
A provocative, intelligent survey of the many complexities, moral and practical, of bringing food to our plates.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781639368198
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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