Overview

"The frightening truth about the modern food system. The bestselling author of The End of Oil turns his attention to food and finds that the system we've entrusted with meeting one of our most basic needs is dramatically failing us. With his trademark comprehensive global approach, Paul Roberts investigates the startling truth about the modern food system: the way we make food, market and consume it, and even think about it is no longer compatible or safe for the billions of consumers the system was built to serve. The emergence of large-scale and efficient food production changed forever our relationship with food and ultimately left a vulnerable and paradoxical system in place. Over 1.1 billion people worldwide are ""over-nourished,"" according to the World Health Organization, and are at risk of obesity-related illness, while roughly as many people are starving. Meanwhile the natural systems all food is dependent upon have been irreparably damaged by chemicals and destructive farming techniques; the pressures of low-cost food production court contamination and disease; and big food consumers, such as China and India, are already planning for tightened global food supplies, making it clear that the era of superabundance is behind us. Vivid descriptions, lucid explanations, and fresh thinking make The End of Food uniquely able to offer a new, accessible way to understand the vulnerable miracle of the modern food economy. Roberts presents clear, stark visions of the future and helps us prepare to make the decisions--personal and global--we must make to survive the demise of food production as we know it."

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Reviews

"Clear-eyed, comprehensive, and compelling. Paul Roberts has gone everywhere, read everything, and returned with the best analysis of global food economy you are likely to find.-- ""Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto"" ""A revealing, deeply dismaying overview of how the world's food is produced and marketed."" -- ""Kirkus Reviews"" ""Clear-eyed, comprehensive, and compelling. Paul Roberts has gone everywhere, read everything, and returned with the best analysis of global food economy you are likely to find."" -- ""Michael Pollan, New York Times bestselling author of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto"" ""Spellbinding...Paul Roberts...helps provide a reasonable and powerful map of how we got ourselves into this fix, and how we might yet get ourselves out."" -- ""Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature"" ""William Dufris...is adept at delivering the mix of seriousness and astonishment clearly intended by Roberts."" -- ""AudioFile"""

Author Information

Paul Roberts is the author of The End of Oil, which was a 2005 New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award Finalist. He is a regular contributor to Harper's, for which he has written about the food, energy, timber, and auto industries, as well as the destruction of the Florida Everglades. A long-time observer of both business and environmental issues, he is an expert on the complex interplay of economics, technology, and the natural world. He resides in Leavenworth, Washington. William Dufris commands a dazzling array of voices that bring to life the dozens of audiobooks he's narrated. Whether it's Sam Spade, a survival expert, a Cuban gangster, or Fletcher the basset hound, William has a voice to embody the character.

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