Hope’s Edge Comments
Here's what people are saying about Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé (Tarcher/Penguin 2002)Book Review from 'Seeds of Change' e-newsletter
For many of us who came of age in the 1970's, reading Frances MooreLappe's "Diet for a Small Planet" was a life transforming experience,shattering our conceptions about the root causes of world hunger andopening our minds to the possibilities of a plant-based, protein-rich,whole-foods diet. Thirty years and millions of copies later, the bookstill makes profound sense in a world where food resources are overlyabundant for some, while painfully scarce for others, and the averageNorth American diet consists of highly processed foods that are shippedthousands of miles to market.
With her newest book, "Hope's Edge, The Next Diet for a Small Planet,"Ms.
Lappe has teamed up with her daughter Anna to revisit and expand onthe
themes of the original book in the context of a world that haschanged
in ways no one could have predicted. The globalization andconsolidation
of our food system, the staggering loss of plantdiversity, the continuing
farm crisis, dwindling water and soilresources, and the genetic modification
of our staple food crops likesoy and corn, lead us to wonder if there
is indeed hope for this smallplanet. "Hope's Edge" considers these
issues, first by challenging theway we've been conditioned to think
about them.
Is hunger really driven by scarcity, as the agribusiness apologistswould
have us believe, or is it an outgrowth of the lack of a "livingdemocracy"
throughout the world as the authors contend? Can we solve ourecological
dilemma by dissection and applying the latest technological"quick fix,"
or do we need to think broadly and look at whole systems,including
people and their cultures?
Page after page, "Hope's Edge" challenges our notions of what the realproblems are and takes us to places where ordinary people are takingextraordinary measures to regain control over their food and theirlives. For many, the results have been improved health, strongercommunities, and conservation of the earth's resources-all astonishingachievements in the face of our dominant "profits before people"paradigm in which over a billion people worldwide are underfed andmalnourished.
"Hope's Edge" takes us to India where Vandana Shiva's "Navdanya" (NineSeeds) Movement has helped thousands of farmers to recover theirtraditional agriculture by saving and sharing seeds, while others,having destroyed their farms with an onslaught of chemicals andincreasing debt, commit suicide, often by ingesting the very chemicalsthey've been sold on borrowed money. In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank'stiny loans have enabled thousands of women to lift themselves fromdestitution while the vast majority is still mired in some of theworld's worst poverty. In Brazil, The Landless Workers Movement (MST),comprised of over 250,000 families, has taken over idle land, vastlyimproving their lives and cutting infant mortality by half, in a landwhere as many as one of every fifteen children die from malnutrition andtreatable diseases. In Kenya, the greenbelt movement has planted 21million trees and struggled to save countless others in an attempt toreforest their denuded countryside, while logging interests fight tosqueeze more profits from the last remaining forest.
Here at home, in Berkeley, California, children are learning the joys oforganic gardening and cooking natural foods in their public middleschool while at the same time billions of dollars are spent to marketnutritionally depleted, fast-food to our children. Time and again we areinspired to realize that we are not powerless, and that our actions arecapable of engendering positive, fundamental change in the face ofdaunting odds. Time and again we are brought to "hope's edge."
In addition to these and other inspiring stories from home and abroad,and a plethora of statistics and information, we are also continuallyreminded of the joys of whole-food cuisines from around the globe. Eachchapter has wonderful recipes that reflect the traditional foods fromthe culture being discussed. The final section, "Coming to our Senses"contains more than fifty gourmet recipes from some of our leadingvegetarian chefs and cookbook authors including, Laurel Robertson, MollyKatsen and Anna Thomas, who, along with Frances Moore Lappe and others,started this revolution in the way we think about food. How far thiscuisine has evolved from its humble vegetable stirfries and beancasseroles!
"Hope's Edge" is a deep, thoughtful, and provocative look at how we feedourselves and how our diet affects our bodies, our communities, and ourfragile and ever smaller planet. It issues an imperative to act; tosupport our local farmers; to teach the value of true democracy; totreasure our environment and to savor the gift of healthy, whole food.Read it and pass it on to a friend. As "Diet for a Small Planet" did formany of us thirty years ago, it could change your life. --S.V.
(This book review appeared in the Organic Consumer Association's Seeds of Change e-Newsletter #27)
posted by Small Planet Institute at 5/31/2005 03:28:00 PMTerrific Book
This is an absolutely terrific book that should be widely used in
classrooms and study groups as well as read by our nation's leaders.
Richard Rowe
Belmont, MA
Foreward Thinking Visionaries
Hope's Edge : The Next Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore
Lappe, Anna Lappe picks up where Diet For A Small Planet left
off than in my opinion this is what makes the authors true geniuses
and part of the movers and shakers of the past and present. They are
not comfortable sitting on their laurels and are instead what I would
call true visionaries and brave souls when you consider what the world
is like in 2002.
On page 11 I read "I still believe food has this unique power. With
food as a starting point, we can choose to meet people and to encounter
events so powerful that they jar us out of our ordinary way of seeing
the world, and open us to new, uplifting and empowering possibilities.
They call us to travel "hopes edge." Thus this is where the title comes
in.
The way the writers share their journey to other lands and others states
here in the US is so interesting. Learning about the different eating
styles and even in a broader sense how people often eat to deal with
pain when in decades past it was a communal thing. People used to eat
to live and now as the countries skyrocketing obesity rates show people
not only live to eat but they eat to deal with issues that once were
dealt with by talking them out. Someday I hope someone writes a book
on food as a tranquilizer and how food has become the PC (politically
correct) substitute for alcohol.
In the 70's and 80's when Diet for a Small Planet was so popular
(and still is) we were in a period where alternative health and eating
choices were the venue of the quirky, hippie, even geek world. Now
in 2002 we face genetically engineered foods, disease in cattle and
now poultry in Asian countries and the authors are now more of a must
read than ever.
This is no longer about simply being nice to the land and the animals
that are raised for food. It is about the worlds health, the world
limited water, and money sources and how what we eat begins long before
the food hits our plate.
And I am glad to see the whole uncomfortable subject of Americans skyrocketing
obesity rates being discussed as well as the poison that is what I
call fast food and junk food and how corporate dollars are the bottom
line and that it is the ignorance of the stock holder who is being
endangered by the very foods their stock investments produce.
One of these days I hope the Nobel Prize powers that be will start
seeing what humanitarians people like Moore Lappe, Dean Ornish and
Paul McCartney are and that Peace Prize needs to go to people who are
seeking to help save the world and not kill it. And for my family and
I we have returned to a non meat diet. Thanks in part to these excellent
examples.
Beth Hartford
Jackson, California
A Must Read for Everyone!
Hope's Edge is a Must Read for Everyone! The book puts it all
together in an easy-to-understand, personal and honest fashion: the
connection between consumerism, 'brainwashing', oppression, global
economy, poverty, exploitation etc. etc. The concepts presented in
this book are sophisticated and have depth. I liked the personal tone
of the book, the story telling. The book is very honest, the stories
told utterly inspiring. Frances and Anna never 'whitewash' the problems
the projects they are describing are facing. This truth-telling makes
the stories even more impressive, more credible. The very existence
of these projects defy the global systems as we know them. The way
they do 'business' defies the global system of exploitation and competition.
This book makes us take an honest look at ourselves, our values, the
daily choices we make, what we consume, how we live. This is not just
'about food' or poverty or world hunger, this is truly food for thought
and inspiration of how to create a better world.
Ulrike
Arlington, MA
Even better than Diet for a Small Planet - a remarkable guide
I wanted to give you some feedback about an extraordinary book that
you sell. Just out a few months ago, written by Frances Moore Lappe
(author of Diet for a Small Planet), Ms. Lappe and her daughter
Anna traveled 5 continents to write the stories of people in communities
that are "doing the right thing" - benefiting their communities in
sustainable ways as well as themselves and serving as inspiration for
those of us who work to create more healthy and sustainable communities. Hope's
Edge is even better than Diet for a Small Planet, and serves
as a remarkable guide in a world that has become much harder to live
in.
Two books that have really changed the way I think about the world
are Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Hope's Edge,
by Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe. Thank you for carrying books
that introduce constructive avenues toward social change and move people
to positive action.
Susan Bumagin
Gloucester, MA
(Originally posted on Amazon)
Pushed the Edge of Hope a Little Further
Given the subject matter, one can be forgiven for expecting Hope's
Edge to be a depressing read--after all we are pushing our planet
to its absolute limit and hope sometimes seems a great folly. But
rather than increase my sense of helplessness, the mother-daughter
team of researchers and writers (Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe)
have inspired me and indeed pushed the edge of hope a little further.
With its documentation of individual lives and community-based solutions,
the book reminds me about the importance of our individual decisions.
It is easy to become complacent when I live in one of the wealthier
parts of the world. It is just as easy to feel helpless and apathetic
and to not see the impact I can make simply by supporting my local
organic farmers and making other conscientious consumer decisions. Hope's
Edge eloquently points to the power of imagination, of envisioning
new ways of living and working in community. Thanks Anna and Frances
for making the journey and sharing it with the world!
Shelley Motz
Victoria, B.C., Canada
Wonderful book!
This is one of the most creative, courageous books I've read in a
long time, drawing lessons from something as essential as food to renew
our hope in an era of anxiety, cynicism, and learned helplessness. Hope's
Edge offers a welcome alternative to a world increasingly dominated
by global capitalism, where more is often spent on processing, packaging,
and promotion than on the nutritional value of the food itself and
where American citizens are becoming unwary guinea pigs for GMO foods.
From their grassroots research spanning five continents, Frances and
Anna Lappe bring heartening evidence that democracy is still alive,
that our personal choices can add up to make a tremendous difference,
and that, as Margaret Mead once said, "a small group of highly committed
people can change the world." I recommend this book highly for its
compelling vision of creativity, community, and positive social change.
dd46 from Santa Clara, CA USA
A Global Tour de Force
*There is a profound disconnect between the direction our planet is
headed and our own deepest sensibilities.
*Why have we, as societies, created that which as individuals we abhor?
*None of use would chose to let a child die of hunger or preventable
disease, but 32,000 children die everyday in our world.
*No one would intentionally destroy many of our living species, and
yet tens of thousands fall every year now. It would take 10 million
years to recover them all.
*No one would want to poke a hole in the ozone, and yet there is now
one the size of a continent, causing cancer and deaths to soar.
*No one would want to create a greenhouse effect, disrupting the natural
system in ways we are only beginning to understand, and yet our fossil-fuel
industrial model, as well as our cattle ranching model, are doing just
this.
*No one would consciously design a world community in which a few hundred
individuals controlled as much wealth as half the world's population,
and where 1 percent end up with more than do the bottom 95 percent,
and yet this is the world we live in.
*In other words, how it could be that we humans are creating a world
that at the deepest level we can't recognize as ours? A world of mega-cities
with unbreathable air, of sterile strip malls, of beggars and billionaires?
A world that we have to shut out because the pain of seeing it is too
great?
Grappling with the global crisis can be daunting, but in this book
Lappe (and little Lappe) have here clarified the crisis, highlighted
the 'thought traps' that keep us locked into this deadly mode, and
provided a new 'mental map' of how we can revitalize ourselves and
the planet. This book is a global tour de force, skipping from continent
to continent, community to community, in search of Hope. And the good
news is, they found it. This book details numerous examples from all
over the world where hope and genuine democracy are literally springing
up from the ground. As cliched as it might sound, Hope is very much
alive. This book is a celebration of food and people and the communities
that bind them. For the sake of life itself, everyone should read this.
Re-discover the world, yourself, and the food that sustains us.
angry_bear from Kanagawa, Japan
Deeply Moved and Inspired
I have felt deeply moved and inspired reading Hope's Edge.
Travelling with Frances and Anna Lappe around the world to learn about
alternative ways of thinking and living has been a wonderful, exciting
inspiration to look at life and my place in life with new and different
eyes and to find out how and where I can change my perceptions.
The actors in this book try to overcome and change the pain and problems
of destructive ways of living. The book made me feel that my life,
and everyone's life, can make a true difference, and that it is worth
trying.
For me, it was one of the most important books which I have encountered,
and the ideas and thinking of Frances and Anna Lappe will accompany
me for many years to come.
What an interesting, exciting, wonderful book!
Barbara Rogers
Chicago, IL
Inspired to get involved in my communities
I grew up with Diet for a Small Planet, and am delighted by
Lappe's new book writen with her daughter. I am inspired to get involved
in my communities agriculture/whole foods issues, and to try the new
recipies.
Erika Ellen
Sebastopol, CA
Hope, when we need it most
What a truly inspiring book! Frances and Anna Lappe put words to the
previously not-so-well-articulated feelings of "stuckness" that lead
so many of us -- and, therefore, the world -- to perpetuate unhealthy
and unsatisfying patterns in our lives and in our communities.
The off-the-beaten track tour of Brazil, Bangladesh, India, Kenya,
and parts of Europe and the United States, gives an inside look at
the growing movement of amazing people doing amazing things to attempt
to reverse the increasing despair-ity in our world. These are the stories
that rarely make it into the "news", but are so important to hear in
order to give us hope.
The recipes sound wonderful, however, I cannot find many of the ingredients
here around my home in East Africa. So, in the true spirit of the book,
I am substituting local ingredients to create globally-inspired cuisine.
I can't wait to teach the mamas in the village how to use some of their
traditional medicinal herbs to make a cream topping for their beet
soup!
If there has ever been a time for reflecting on how we are all linked-up,
this book gives some wonderful insights and clues to how to make sense
of it all...and, how to finally make the leap towards making a difference
Tanya Pergola
Arusha, Tanzania
It simply gave and gives me hope
Many authors can and have articulated the problems of today's society.
It is important for those problems to be exposed and explained - but
where does that leave us? As someone all too familiar with the problems,
and struggling to live with my ideals in today's America, it is easy
to feel like there is no hope and the world's people are just accepting
their fate at the hands of the multi-nationals. That's when a book
like Hope's Edge begins to reveal its meaning and importance:
it not only covers the problems, more importantly, it uncovers stories
of people who are overcoming the problems.
The book arms us with examples of people and strategies that are working,
that are making progress. It didn't leave me feeling like we're all
doomed no matter what we do, it didn't leave me feeling that I can
sit back and relax because someone else is making things ok, it simply
gave and gives me hope, examples and evidence that it is possible to
create healthy communities and empower people in the face of fear,
oppression and poverty. That is the seed of true power, the knowing
it is possible. For that I thank Ms. Lappe and her daughter and highly
recommend their book.
A reader from Barnardsville, NC
An eye-opener for me...thank you!
The book you co-authored with your daughter Anna was absolutely fascinating
and truly inspired me to investigate the prevalence of genetically
modified organisms in our food. Through my own research, I have become
a much more informed consumer and am in the process of changing my
diet to include more GMO-free options. The book was really an eye-opener
for me and I want to thank you and Anna for that. I was thoroughly
engaged while reading the book and learned not only about GMOs but
also about free-trade coffee, student gardens that inspire, and the
Grameen Bank to empower women - not to mention some tasty vegetarian
recipes! So thank you.
Sara Straubel
Ithaca College, Student
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