Hopeful and enlightening commentary on the future of the food industry.
An examination of the problems and future of America’s broken food system.
Through a series of essays, market researcher and author Underhill, the author of Why We Buy and Call of the Mall, takes us on an eye-opening journey. According to the author, the system is broken, and technology is largely responsible. Today, technology has “turned the things we eat and drink into commercial products to be engineered, manufactured, and marketed like tires or toothpaste….Once, it was the scarcity of food that threatened our lives; today, it’s the abundance.” As the author notes, younger Americans may never realize that fruits and vegetables have specific growing seasons, as they are now available for purchase nearly anywhere and year-round. In the past few years, Americans’ shopping habits have changed significantly. Intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic, shoppers have increasingly turned to online outlets for their groceries and other needs. Due to issues related to trust and transparency in the production of food, as well as environmental and ethical concerns, other consumers have turned increasingly to local producers. With a witty, conversational tone, Underhill leads readers on a trip through various aspects of the food industry to demonstrate the ways in which changes in consumer behavior, as well as production concerns, are being addressed. He explores the layout of a typical supermarket and chronicles his tour of a farmers market in New York City as well the headquarters of a popular supercenter. Underhill is not all doom-and-gloom regarding technology’s impact. He points out certain developments, such as innovations in cannabis growing, that are being used to address climate change and the nation’s growing population. The author also recounts his interviews with farmers, members of the media, and industry experts, all of whom provide specific insights about the topic.
Hopeful and enlightening commentary on the future of the food industry.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982127-09-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
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
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
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