A compelling primer on the benefits of an herbivorous diet for health and a stable planetary ecosystem.
Spitz's guide promotes a vegan lifestyle for both personal well-being and environmental sustainability.
The author, a septuagenarian environmental and animal rights activist, channels his passion for good health and a better world into this comprehensive study of the negative impacts of animal-based food sources. Split into seven sections and written from a variety of anthropological perspectives, the book outlines the origins of human consumption patterns and their evolution and adaptation across centuries (a section on the domestication of fruits, nuts, vegetables, and animals is particularly fascinating). Spitz ambitiously bolsters his viewpoint with history-supported hypotheses on how civilizations prospered through the popularity of agriculture, the exchange of fibrous plants and germination efforts across Old and New World cultures, and the ill effects of the human exploitation of animals as an increasingly popular food source, replacing the starchy vegetable diet enjoyed prior to the mid-19th century. His appeal for change stems directly from the numerous ways animal agriculture has become detrimental to both human vitality and the environment; the author points to studies concluding that human nutritional needs can be efficiently met with plant-based vegan nourishment “using a fraction of the land, water and energy resources it takes to provide an animal-based diet.” Spitz’s argument against the “global appetite for meat, dairy and eggs” is compelling as he discusses how livestock processing and production have had devastating environmental impacts on greenhouse gasses and runaway climate change across the globe. A final section details what the author considers “the optimal human diet.” Spitz references a convincing combination of data analysis, expansive anthropological research, and nutritional science studies that might prove too academically dense for lay readers seeking a more simplistic summary. Still, his approach remains applicably inclusive as he places responsibility directly on the reader to initiate dietary modifications. Having reached his 70s, the author is grateful for his thriving lifestyle; noting that the men in his family tend to die young, Spitz attributes his longevity to a healthful vegan mindset.
A compelling primer on the benefits of an herbivorous diet for health and a stable planetary ecosystem.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781662932885
Page Count: 510
Publisher: 6th Sense Press
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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