An optimistic yet realistic look at the problems and possibilities of global food production.
Canadian journalist and college instructor Boyle’s nonfiction work seeks a way to combat climate change by taking a lesson from European history.
The first half of this book delineates the United Kingdom’s approach to food-supply problems during the turbulent years leading up to and during the Second World War. At the time, the U.K. depended greatly on food importation, which would certainly be threatened by a military conflict. Led by Lord Woolton, the newly appointed Minister of Food, the government instigated a bold campaign to change citizens’ expectations and approaches to farming and eating. A rationing system was implemented, and government intervention aimed to make agricultural practices more productive. The government also made use of the media to encourage more food production in home gardens or allotments and discourage food waste, among other actions. Interestingly, despite the restrictions, this system resulted in better nutrition for poorer people in the nation and led to an overall healthier citizenry with better morale. Boyle argues that our modern war is against climate change, to which our current food production system contributes. In order to face this threat, she asserts, humankind must “fundamentally change the way we grow and consume food.” She talks about current projects and programs that are making positive change, such as private companies committing to ethically sourced produce, apps for finding farmers markets, and farmers and ranchers aiming to “produce healthy food that is affordable and kinder to animals, local environments, and climate.” In this informative book, Boyle effectively outlines applicable lessons from the U.K.’s WWII–era food-supply approach to problems of today, noting that change can occur in systems as well as individual choices; that strong public leadership is a necessity; and that nations need to come together in common cause. Overall, this thoroughly researched and referenced book is compelling, and many readers’ eyes will be opened to a large-scale problem and the potential for addressing it through concerted, deliberate action. Throughout, Boyle argues her points convincingly, and many will find a sense of hope in her ideas.
An optimistic yet realistic look at the problems and possibilities of global food production.Pub Date: April 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-03-912367-0
Page Count: 294
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
