Book Reviews

Global Vegetarian Cooking

By Troth Wells

This slender volume, abundant with photos of succulent veggies and international market scenes, simplifies some of the most exotic cooking into easily prepared, essentially-flavored meals. The background information is an interesting read, and the recipes are good examples of world cuisines. This is a vegetarian cookbook, and it is vegan-friendly. My only criticism is that some recipes are too simple and don't render the complex, layered flavors traditional in some cuisines, such as Thai and Indian.

1,001 Low-Fat Vegetarian Recipes – Second Edition

By Sue Spitler with Linda R. Yoakam, MS, RD

If you're looking for a comprehensive vegetarian cookbook, this is it. Though Deborah Madison's fabulous tome Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone can't be beat as an introduction to vegetarian cooking, this chunky edition is certainly the best cookbook for variety, ingenuity, ease, and sheer volume of recipes. There are five types of chili, fourteen loaf recipes, and over thirty pizza ideas. And there are plenty of recipes that I bet you never thought you could make lowfat!

This is not a vegan book, but many recipes are made vegan very easily. What we found when trying the recipes was that often ingredients had to be prepared in advance or soaked overnight. But whatever we had to do was well worth it. The results were unfailingly delicious!

Cafe Max & Rosie's

By Max & Rosie Beeby

Your nephew just announced to you that he's decided to go vegan. Or your daughter decided that she wants to start a macrobiotic diet. Or your favorite uncle is complaining that since his last heart attack, his new vegetarian diet is bland, boring, and no fun at all. What a terrific opportunity to present the perfect gift to these neophyte veggies! This sumptuously illustrated book is a great introduction to vegetarian cooking, complete with “The World's Best Vegetarian Sandwiches” section and a group of vegetable juice recipes. Though Rosie admits that she does use feta cheese, the book is mostly vegan. It includes a host of recipes that are standard vegan fare: loaves, pastas, stir-fries, soups, and salads. They are very flavorful, but not exciting enough for the seasoned cook (or the cook who uses a lot of seasoning!). But fear not — it does contain some fresh ideas for those who are looking for a gourmet flair.

Beauty, Health, and Happiness

By Lily of Colorado

Lily of Colorado lives as she preaches — happily, peacefully, and doing what she loves: running a small, ethical skin care products line. For the first third of this book, she is quite stuck on the happiness part. She chats away, offering a pep talk and sounding like a best girlfriend, as if the reader is trying to stuff her legs into a pair of jeans a size too small, or is guiltily sneaking a cigarette. And it's very sweet: we all need that best girlfriend–the one who will love us no matter who we are or what we are doing. She seems to genuinely care for our mental well-being and believes that as soon as we are happy with ourselves, the rest will follow.

The result is a bubbly, positive book that has a great outlook and a bunch of wonderful ideas about nutrition, rejuvenation, and inner peace. Although the bulk of the book is about her skin care products, you are invited to take whatever you need from it — it's about your health and your happiness. And if you do giggle girlishly once or twice while you're reading, don't worry — I did the same thing.

Fast Food Nation – The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

By Eric Schlosser

The statistics speak for themselves: last year, Americans shelled out more than $110 billion on fast food — more than they spent on higher education, computers, or new cars. McDonald's operates about twenty-eight thousand restaurants worldwide and opens two thousand more every year. Fast food chains collectively spend about $3 billion annually on television advertising, most of it directed at children. Meatpacking is the most dangerous job in the US, even with many of the injuries going unreported.

Finally, a well-researched and trenchant exposé of the fast food industry is causing a stir in American media circles. While several worthwhile books have been written in recent years about the broader social implications of a meat-centered diet (Erik Marcus' Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, Gail Eisnitz's Slaughterhouse, and Howard Lyman's Mad Cowboy, to name a few), none has been greeted more warmly by the mainstream press than Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. An award-winning, non-vegetarian journalist for the Atlantic Monthly, Schlosser cannot be accused of harboring any ulterior motives or hidden agendas — he admits that he ate much of the food he writes about while researching the book.

All the accolades are quite well-deserved. The material is thoroughly researched, much of it stemming from the numerous firsthand accounts and interviews that Schlosser conducted while traveling around the country, from the flavor factories of New Jersey to the slaughterhouses of Nebraska. Equally im-pressive is the author's writing style, which is always compelling as he mixes personal stories with well-documented and interesting information.

Schlosser doesn't pull any punches, explaining in gory detail exactly what lies behind the success of Happy Meals and other fast food creations. He devotes much of his attention to McDonald's, the company whose pioneering food processing techniques gave rise to a modern industry. Today McDonald's is the country's largest purchaser of beef, pork, and potatoes, and it's the second biggest purchaser of chicken — which you might expect. What you may not know is that it's also the largest owner of retail property in the world and that it operates more playgrounds than any other private entity in the United States. Even more telling for its impact on young people, Ronald McDonald was found to be one of the most recognizable fictional characters among a group of American schoolchildren, second only to Santa Claus.

What I appreciate most about Fast Food Nation is the author's effort to cover a broad range of social issues and show how they're all connected. For example, he ties the industry's incredibly rapid growth to the development of the nation's highway system. He also reveals how the industry infiltrates schools and forms strong partnerships with companies like Disney and other media conglomerates, all in a clever and very successful effort to get children to clamor for its products.

Schlosser also dedicates a significant portion of the book to an issue that tends not to get much attention: labor. He covers the plight of the unskilled restaurant workers, as well as the fate of those suffering under horrific conditions in the slaughterhouses, all the while explaining how a mammoth and powerful industry is keeping improved government oversight at bay. Finally, he explains how the industry lobbies to keep down the minimum wage.

The one issue clearly missing is the plight of the nine billion factory-farmed animals killed each year, largely for the fast food industry. While this is an odd omission, even for a non-vegetarian author, the book is still extremely worthwhile and sure to open anybody's eyes, even those already knowledgeable about the subject. Fast Food Nation is an excellent read, and I highly recommend it.

Speaking Out for Animals

Edited by Kim W. Stallwood

Speaking Out for Animals – True Stories about Real People Who Rescue Animals consists of a selection of articles that previously appeared in The Animals' Agenda, an animal rights magazine. It includes interviews with Paul McCartney (musician), Anita Roddick (founder of the Body Shop), Alex Pacheco (co-founder of PETA), and others. You'll also find a wide variety of pieces describing animal rights work done by movement leaders as well as individuals. This book is quite interesting and worth sharing with friends.