27 Books That Help Us Pause And Re-Ground Ourselves In The Food System

Danielle Nierenberg, President, Food Tank

Danielle Nierenberg 

Dear Mostafa Kamal,

The past several weeks have been a whirlwind!

At Food Tank, we've gone from Climate Week NYC to the World Food Prize and Borlaug Dialogues in Des Moines to our Food First Health Summit in Philadelphia just last week. This week's midterm elections in the United States will likely change food and agriculture policy, too. And right now, I'm on my way to Chicago to celebrate the great food education work happening at the organization Pilot Light.

Next week, we will be joining world leaders, advocates, scientists, and others in Antalya, Türkiye, for COP31, the United Nations Climate Change Conference. If you'll be there too, send me an email—I'd love to say hello.

There's a lot happening in the food system right now. Some of it makes me hopeful. Some of it makes me frustrated. And all of it reminds me how much we still have to learn from one another.

One of the things I love most about my work is the opportunity to listen to people with different experiences and perspectives. Farmers, chefs, researchers, activists, policymakers, and community leaders all have stories to tell and lessons to share—and I think books can be another wonderful way to learn from those voices.

That's why I'm excited to share Food Tank's Fall Reading List, featuring 27 books that are challenging conventional wisdom, asking important questions, and offering new ways to think about food and agriculture.

Some of these books tackle big, complicated issues like corporate power, hunger, water scarcity, and the climate crisis. Others explore the connections between food and health, the importance of seed diversity, and the knowledge that farmers and Indigenous communities have passed down for generations.

And, of course, there are some wonderful cookbooks, because food should also bring us joy!

I'm especially excited about Food Is Medicine by my friend Dariush Mozaffarian, Food Sense by Christopher Gardner, and Medicine for All People by Geeta Maker-Clark. These books are helping us rethink the relationship between what we eat and our health.

And other new books this season are by chefs including Kwame Onwuachi, Hari Pulapaka, Pim Techamuanvivit, Nik Sharma, and Pati Jinich, all of whom bring us recipes and stories that connect what’s on our plates to our communities and the natural world.

Here’s the full list of books (alphabetized by title) that we recommend adding to your to-read stack this fall: 

• A Practical Farmer’s Journey: A History of Community, Stewardship, and Resilience by Ronald L. Rosmann

• Agri-Energy: Growing Power, Growing Food by Rebekah Pierce

• All Hours: Crazy Good Food for Whatever, Whenever by Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein

• Banking on Groundwater: The Quest to Replenish the World’s Aquifers by William M. Alley and Rosemarie Alley (forthcoming November 17)

• Beans, Greens & Lentils: A Plant-Based Cookbook of Protein-Rich & Nutritious Recipes by Hari Pulapaka (forthcoming December 8)

• Black Farm Boys: The Untold Story of the New Farmers of America by Bobby J. Smith II

• Black Farmers in America: Fighting for an Equitable Food System by Mya O. Price

• Captive Consumers: Hunger, Violence, and Inequality in American Prison Food by Chin Jou

• Cooking Thai: Heritage and Modern Recipes from My Kitchen Notebooks by Pim Techamuanvivit with Andrea Nguyen

• Depression Cooking: Feeding Yourself When It All Feels Too Hard by Sonali Menezes

• Famine in World History by R. Douglas Hurt

• Food Heritage: Critical Perspectives edited by Loïc Bienassis and Fabio Parasecoli

• Food Is Medicine: Healing Our Bodies, Nourishing Our Minds, and Transforming Our Food System by Dariush Mozaffarian (forthcoming October 20)

• Food Sense: What to Eat and Why by Christopher Gardner

• Fundamentals of Flavor: 100 Recipes for the Science of Better Cooking by Nik Sharma

• Foods of La Frontera: Recipes and New Taste Frontiers from Both Sides of the Border by Pati Jinich

• Happy Snacking, Don’t Die! Foraging and Vegan Recipes with Black Forager by Alexis Nikole Nelson

• How to Cook Everything Vegan: Build on the Basics for Exciting Plant-Based Meals by Mark Bittman

• Medicine for All People: Science and Ancient Wisdom for Revolutionary Healing by Geeta Maker-Clark

• Plant Teachings from My Auntie: Gathering Coast Salish Plants for Medicine, Textiles, Nourishment, and Ceremony by C’tasi:a, Geraldine Manson and Nancy Turner

• Reining in the Bulls: How to Stop Corporate Abuse in an Age of Unbridled Greed by Michael Marx

• Saved by Seeds: Embracing Diversity, Adaptation and Resilience by Chris Smith

• Seeding Hope: What Plants Teach Us About Being Human by Jack Algiere

• Sugar Coated: Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America’s Favorite Breakfast Food by Marion Nestle and Lisa Sutherland

• Sustainable Agriculture in Ukraine: From Resource-Intensive Farming to Agroecological Systems by Sergiusz Pimenow, Olena Pimenowa, and Lubov Moldavan

• The Ecology of Food: Sustainable Food Systems and Diets edited by Nicolas Bricas, Damien Conaré, and Marie Walser

• Wine Liberated: The Ecological Revolution and the Vintners Inspiring Change by Adam Huss

What catches your eye? CLICK HERE for more details about each one of these books!

And email me at danielle@foodtank.com to let me know what you’re reading, too. I hope you’ll join me this season in taking a moment to slow down from our fast-paced lives, find a new book, and look around at a new aspect of the food system through its pages. If we don’t, we might miss something that could change our perspectives, change the ways we take action, or even change the world!

Onward,

Dani

(Danielle Nierenberg is the President of Food Tank and can be reached at danielle@foodtank.com)