A word for that stack of books
The Japanese language has a single word for the pile of books avid readers accumulate: tsundoku. Chances are your holiday list has a few people on it with a penchant for hoarding knowledge. We understand. We all have our own book stack at the ready, whether they are filling the digital queue on our e-readers and audio apps, toppling a shelf, or precariously stacked at our bedside.
Here are some of our recent favorite food, agriculture, and nature titles we recommend for filling stockings, topping off stacks, or perfecting a friend’s tsundoku stash.
Grain by Grain
A Quest to Revive Ancient Wheat, Rural Jobs, and Healthy Food
By Bob Quinn and Liz Carlisle
Bob Quinn’s path in agriculture was seeded, literally, when he received a few grains of ancient wheat from a stranger at a county fair. After college, Quinn returned to his family farm in Montana, armed with a PhD in plant biochemistry and a mission to make organic grain farming profitable.
Soon, Quinn was using not only heirloom grains, but age-old practices like cover cropping and crop rotation to produce profitable yields without pesticides. Quinn eventually built the multimillion-dollar heirloom grain company, Kamut International. In the book, he and co-author Liz Carlisle share his lessons and successes — kernels of wisdom to guide the regeneration of farming, growing profits, healthy soil and food, and revitalizing rural communities.
Rooted
The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership
By Brea Baker
“Don’t sell the land.” Brea Baker shared these last words from her grandfather in a recent interview with Foodprint. Baker’s book, Rooted, is the personal story of her family’s devastating loss of their land in Kentucky and North Carolina, their move north, and a return south to once again own acreage. The book is also a narrative of the larger issue, the untold history of land forcibly taken from Black Americans. Between 1910 and 1997, Black Americans lost about 90% of their farmland. Today, less than one percent of rural land is owned by Black Americans.
Rooted explores the aftermath of land loss, including the racial wealth gap, privatized natural resources, and permanent barriers to land access for Black farmers. Baker provides context on the link between sustainability and landownership by Black and Indigenous peoples. The book is also a love story, celebrating the deep meaning of connecting and caring for the land.
How the Other Half Eats
The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in America
By Priya Fielding-Singh, PhD
Author, sociologist, and ethnographer Priya Fielding-Singh invites us to share a meal and perspectives on food inequality in the book, How the Other Half Eats. Through the pages, we dine with four families: the Bakers, a Black family living below the federal poverty line; the Williamses, a working-class white family just above it; the Ortegas,a middle-class Latinx family; and the Cains, an affluent white family.
Each of these families helps us understand how deeply food system issues — including health, access, and affordability — impact their lives and define what’s for dinner.
Eating to Extinction
The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them
By Dan Saladino
Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2022.
As we experience the Sixth Extinction, biodiversity loss means not only risking extinction of the earth’s creatures but losing many edible plant species as well. BBC food journalist Dan Saladino takes us on a journey to find the world’s rarest foods and the discover the stories of the people and indigenous communities working to save them. The narratives of farmers, scientists, cooks, and food producers are just as diverse and fascinating as the foods.
Saladino’s text is both gastronomic journal and cultural immersion in the rich history of “landrace” foods, those adapted to thrive in specific locations with seeds and traditions that are passed down through generations. Eating to Extinction helps us appreciate the biodiversity on our plates so we can save it before its gone.
The Great Displacement
Climate Change and the Next American Migration
By Jake Bittle
Shortlisted for the 2024 Carnegie Medal for Excellence.
For many in the U.S., “climate migration” is something we think will only affect other populations. In reality, tens of thousands of Americans have already been displaced due to climate-related disasters. Climate migration is here now and will only increase as the country experiences more devastating wildfires and disasters, including the recent storms in North Carolina and Florida.
Bittle’s text describes the coming climate migration that will displace millions of Americans in the next fifty years, through the personal stories of those who have already lost their homes and seen their communities torn apart.