MITPressLog

Food Books for your Reading List

Julia Child changed the way we think about food. In celebration of Julia's 100th birthday, we've rounded up a few books that further the discussion regarding our ever-changing relationship with food:

 

America's Food: What You Don't Know About What You Eat
By Harvey Blatt 

The complete story of what we don't know, and what we should know, about American food production and its effect on health and the environment.

 

 

Food
Edited by John Knechtel

As the slow food movement meets fast food nation and eating locally collides with on-demand arugula, our food habits are shifting: writers and artists examine and imagine these changes, from the idea of a farm in a skyscraper to a map of fruit that falls on public property, from the genealogy of an organic bento box to a tale of chop suey and egg rolls.

 

 

Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability
Edited by Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman

Documents how racial and social inequalities are built into our food system, and how communities are creating environmentally sustainable and socially just alternatives.

 

 

Food Justice
By Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi

The story of how the emerging food justice movement is seeking to transform the American food system from seed to table.

 

 

 

 

California Cuisine and Just Food
By Louise Nelson Dyble, Greig Tor Guthey, Lauren Gwin, Monica Moore and Jennifer Sokolove
COMING SOON: October 2012

An account of the shift in focus to access and fairness among San Francisco Bay Area alternative food activists and advocates.

 

The Tour de France and City Cycling

Happy Friday! Here's a guest post about everyday cycling from John Pucher and Ralph Buehler, editors of City Cycling, which comes out this fall. For more info and updates about the book, be sure to visit City Cycling.

As every summer, millions of cycling enthusiasts worldwide are currently following the 99th Tour de France. In their race to the finish line on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Tour’s cyclist athletes ride 3,500 kilometers in 23 days, compete in fast-paced time trials, and traverse steep mountains in the Alps and the Pyrénées. The nearly 200 top-fit, professional cyclists use the latest technology of expensive light-weight bicycles, special thirst-quenching drinks, and aerodynamic helmets to gain the decisive advantage to win first place.

By comparison, every day millions of Americans, Canadians, Australians, and Europeans—most without any special training—ride their ordinary bicycles to work, school, the grocery store, to visit friends, and for leisure and recreation. While not nearly as glamorous as the Tour de France, everyday cycling in cities provides far greater individual and societal benefits. Daily, ordinary cycling contributes to physical activity and cardiovascular health, saves energy, improves environmental quality, reduces traffic congestion, and makes cities more livable, sustainable, and resilient. Most daily cyclists ride simple, inexpensive bikes, almost never wear special cycling outfits, and rarely use safety helmets. Except for the very young, the very old, and persons with severe disabilities, city cycling is potentially for almost everyone.   

Over the past few decades, many cities in Europe, North America, and Australia have successfully promoted cycling as a practical, daily means of travel for everyone. The forthcoming book by The MIT Press City Cycling documents the worldwide trend toward more daily cycling and highlights successful policies that make cycling an attractive, feasible alternative to the car. City Cycling emphasizes that bicycling should not be limited to those who are highly trained, extremely fit, and daring enough to battle traffic on busy roads. The fifteen chapters of this book highlight the many government policies necessary to make cycling safe, convenient, and feasible for a broad range of social groups: women as well as men, all age groups, and a wide range of physical and mental abilities. The book examines in detail policies such as the provision of good cycling infrastructure (paths, lanes, parking), traffic calming of residential neighborhoods, car-free city centers, improved traffic education for motorists and cyclists, integration of cycling with public transit, bikesharing, and various informational and promotional programs. City Cycling also includes two chapters devoted to the specific needs of women and children, describing the measures that should be implemented to raise their cycling levels, in particular. Overall, the key message of the book is that it is indeed possible to dramatically increase cycling even in car-oriented countries like the USA. To do so, however, it is necessary to implement a coordinated, multi-faceted, mutually reinforcing set of policies, such as those explained in this book.

 

Children’s Awareness Month Roundup

June is Children’s Awareness Month in the United States. To celebrate, here are a few titles that talk about children—where they live, how they are raised, what they play--and why (or why not) we have them.

 

Children Without a State, edited by Jacqueline Bhabha, is the first book to address children’s statelessness and lack of legal status as a human rights issue.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Julie Dunlap and Stephen R. Kellert, Companions in Wonder is an anthology of adventures with children in the natural world, from capturing fireflies to encountering a grizzly bear.

 

 

 

 

 

Engineering Play by Mizuko Ito explains how the influential industry that produced such popular games as Oregon Trail and KidPix emerged from experimental efforts to use computers as tools in child-centered learning.

 

 

 

 

Parentonomics by Joshua Gans talks about what every parent needs to know about negotiating, incentives, outsourcing, and other strategies to solve the economic management problem that is parenting.

 

 

 

 

Christine Overall’s Why Have Children is a wide-ranging exploration of whether or not choosing to procreate can be morally justified--and if so, how.

 

 

 

 

 

How to Budget Time to Commute by Bike

Happy National Bike to Work Week (May 14-18)! Miranda Martin, an acquisitions assistant at the MIT Press, recently started biking to the office. Here, she shares what John Forester's Effective Cycling, seventh edition has taught her about cycle-commuting:

 

Of the handful of us in the MIT Press office who commute to work by bike, I’m the least experienced by several years: this is my first cycling season. I had no experience riding a bike in traffic or farther than a couple of miles until this spring, but I had an urge to try it. (That urge by the way, sprang up in part from my work on MIT Press’s books about bicycling.)

So, I set off with a more experienced partner one Saturday a few weeks ago to test what would be my ten-mile ride to work. The distance initially daunted me, and according to cyclist John Forester in the brand-new edition of Effective Cycling, endurance is a common concern: “When most people consider cycling for any distance, they worry about getting tired.”

Forester goes on to explain that “the cycle-commuting distance problem is not fatigue but time. You know that you will feel better for any daily cycling exercise for which you can afford the time; the question is whether you can afford the time to get it.” I did feel great after that first ride, both because of the exercise and the boost in confidence I got from cycling—effectively—20 miles in one day for the first time. But is there time to fit that ride into a regular workday schedule?

To kick off Bike Week here in Massachusetts, LivableStreets Alliance, Somerville Bicycle Committee, and Cambridge Bicycle Committee hosted a Rush Hour Race: a competition for one cyclist, one motorist, and one public transit rider to find the fastest way to travel the three miles between Davis and Kendall Squares in Cambridge. The cyclist won, showing that at least sometimes, in some places, it’s quicker to go by bike.

Here’s how it works out for me: on days I take public transit to work, I typically spend about 55 minutes total walking to my neighborhood commuter rail station, riding the train, transferring to the subway, and arriving at the office. Last week, I used Google’s My Tracks app to gather some statistics about my bike commute. Total time for the ten-mile ride to work: one hour and one minute.

So, on average, I’m getting an hour of cycling at a cost of only six extra minutes of my time. And on days I happen to avoid even a small public-transit delay by riding my bike instead, I come out ahead and have a much more pleasant experience.

As Forester sums it up, “If you enjoy cycling, whether for itself or because you like the exercise, cycle-commuting is a bargain” when it comes to the time costs.

 

Can Robotic Dogs Help Socialize Children with Autism?

In Technological Nature: Adaptation and the Future of Human Life, Peter Kahn shows how technological nature is better than no nature but not as good as actual nature. In Chapter 9 of Technological Nature, Kahn zeroes in on the first part of his proposition (technological nature is better than no nature) when he investigates whether robotic dogs can help socialize children with autism.

Autism is a developmental disorder that is characterized by three main symptoms: impaired social interaction, impaired communication, and the presence of repetitive behaviors and restricted interests. Kahn states, “In the field of human-robot interaction (HRI), there have been some pioneering studies that suggest that robots might be able to ameliorate one or more of these symptoms.” Many such studies found that AIBO, a robotic dog used to conduct this cutting-edge research, was “more attractive [to children] than a nonrobotic toy.”

How can a robotic animal aid in the social development of a child with autism? Kahn suggests two ways that this might happen: the child interacts with the robot as a social other and robots may provide children with autism with a “pivotal medium for enhanced communication with adults.”

Kahn leaves us with this parting thought: “The key idea, then, is this: AIBO is patterned simply, but it is not simply repetitive. In this sense, AIBO is similar to much of nature. People can be captivated, for example, by looking at ocean waves breaking onto the shore, or experiencing a waterfall, because the water’s pattern is always changing, simple but compelling. I suspect that these engaging 'repetitive' properties of nature—and of technological nature if it is designed right—have not yet been fully recognized as a means to benefit children with autism.”

Check out Technological Nature for more information about Kahn’s study of how robotic dogs might aid children with autism—and, on a completely unrelated but still fun note, here’s a video of an “AIBO on the Typewriter.”

 

Earth Day Giveaway: Food Justice

We're giving away a copy of Food Justice by Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi to celebrate Earth Day! Food Justice tells the story of how the emerging food justice movement is seeking to transform the American food system from seed to table. 

Answer the questions below, which are culled from our previous Earth Day-related posts, for a chance to win a copy of Food Justice. Submit your answers as a comment on this post and you will be entered into a drawing to win. Your comment won't show up so that it's fair. The deadline to enter the contest is April 22nd, and we will notify the lucky winner by April 25th.

Why are the recycling rates that are commonly quoted deceptive?

How much waste is estimated to be produced in the United States each year? Of that, what percentage is actually recycled?

How many  species of invertebrate are estimated to live in Costa Rica?

Costa Rica has built up a system of almost 250 national parks, wildlife refuges and biological reserves. Who owns the vast majority of this land?

 

Reduce, Reuse, Reconsider

We're another week closer to Earth Day (4/22) and our environmental book give-away contest (check back on 4/18 for entry details!). Today's facts are from Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States by Samantha MacBride. Recycling Reconsidered tells how the success and popularity of recycling has diverted attention from the steep environmental costs of manufacturing the goods we consume and discard. Samantha MacBride teaches at Columbia University’s School of Public and International Affairs and is a professional in local waste governance.

 

• Bottles and jars that residents set out with their cans, plastics, and other recyclables rarely arrive at materials recovery facilities intact, but even those that do are sure to get broken as they proceed. As mixed recyclables move along a conveyor belt, a combination of magnets, electrical currents, air jets, and hand picking remove metal, plastic, and paper, leaving only glass. As glass is sifted out of the moving mix, it emerges crushed, mixed with food residues and bits of label. In this form, known as “dirty mixed cullet,” it is not good for much. At best, it can be used as low-grade fill or what is known as “alternative daily cover,” a substitute for the earthen layer that must cover each day’s load of trash at the landfill. If it is going to become anything more, it has to be shipped to a beneficiation facility to get cleaned and color sorted.

 

• Between 1970 and 1980, municipal solid waste generation in the United States had grown from 3.3 to 3.6 pounds per capita per day. By 1986, residents and businesses were throwing away 4.3 pounds a day. 

 

• Recycling rates commonly quoted are deceptive, since they usually are for municipal solid wastes only. Although many American communities are now recycling 25 to 50 percent of the trash they collect, other kinds of wastes are recycled much less and are produced in greater quantities. All told, an estimated 23 billion tons of waste (excluding water) are produced in the United States each year. Of this, less than 2 percent is actually recycled, most of it paper, glass, and metals.
  --- (Quoted from INFORM’s Entended Producer Responsibility: A Materials Policy for the 21^st Century).

 

• If you live in North America, you have probably seen code numbers stamped on the bottom of plastic bottles, tubs, trays, and even some plastic bags, surrounded by the three chasing arrows that since 1970 have symbolized recycling. Although consumers widely construe these code numbers, which run from one to seven, as instructions to recycle the item in question, the numbers are, in the words of the plastics industry itself, “not intended to be-–nor ever promoted as-–a guarantee to consumers that a given item bearing the code will be accepted for recycling in their community.”

 

• At the end of the 2000s, almost 60 proposals exist to ban, assess fees on, or require in-store recycling collection of plastic bags active in states and a few localities across the United States. In some states where in-store recycling, mandatory or otherwise, has been implemented, such as Delaware, Rhode Island, and New York, no program meets the criteria of strong extended producer responsibility to require producers to document baseline quantities generated and quantities diverted and to achieve mandatory targets for recycling.

 

Costa Rica by the Numbers

Earth Day is on April 22nd, and we'll be celebrating in the weeks leading up to it by posting an array of facts from a few of our environmental books each Wednesday (trivia fans, take note!). To top it off, we're offering a give-away contest for an environmental book closer to 4/22, so be sure to check back for entry details.

Today's Earth Day tidbits are from Adrian Hepworth's Wild Costa Rica: The Wildlife and Landscapes of Costa Rica. Adrian Hepworth is a wildlife photographer based in Cartago, Costa Rica.

 

 

• Scientists have recorded 240 species of mammal, 860 species of bird (which represent 8 per cent of the world's total), 221 species of reptile and 174 species of amphibian in Costa Rica. In addition, more than 10,000 species of plant have been identified with another 2,000 believed to remain undiscovered, and a staggering 370,000 species of invertebrate are estimated to live in Costa Rica, of which 350,000 are insects.

 

• Between 3 and 4 per cent of all the world's animal and plant species can be found in Costa Rica. This figure becomes all the more astounding when we consider that, with a land area of just 51,100 sq km, Costa Rica represents only 0.03 per cent of the world's total land surface area; it is less than half the size of England, not much larger than Switzerland or Belgium and more than eight times smaller than the US state of California.

 

• Among the dozens of birds and prey that live in the rainforests of Costa Rica there are five species of eagle, including the Crested Eagle and Ornate Hawk Eagle. The largest eagle of the Americas, the Harpy Eagle, may still survive in the country despite the lack of confirmed sightings in recent years.

 

• Since 1945, Costa Rica has built up a system of almost 250 national parks, wildlife refuges and biological reserves that cover roughly 20 per cent of its land area. The vast majority of this land is government-owned, although almost 150 private properties also account for a valuable part of the country's wildernesses.

 

• Almost 4 km above the palm-shaded beaches and hot, steamy jungles of the Costa Rican lowlands there is a sharp, rocky summit where no trees grow and icicles form at night. With a view of two oceans and looking down on the clouds, this mountain is the pinnacle of the Talamanca Mountain Range. At 3,819 m above sea level, Mount Chirripó is taller than any other mountain in neighbouring Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras.

Monday Eye Candy: Greening through IT

Another reason to think "green" now that St. Pat's is over: Spring begins tomorrow! In spirit of the new season, today's Eye Candy comes from Greening through IT: Information Technology for Environmental Sustainability by Bill Tomlinson. Greening through IT contains 2 black-and-white illustrations, 9 halftones, and 8 graphs.

 

 

 

 

 

An oil palm plantation (Dittmar, 2008). © Percita Dittmar.

 

 

 

 

Migrant child from Hunan Province sits atop one of countless piles of unrecyclable computer waste imported from around the world. Guiyu, China. December 2001. Photo and caption © Basel Action Network.

 

 

 

 

Molten television. Use of brominated flame retardants and heavy metals in plastics by manufacturers such as Sony create dangerous emissions when burned and disposed in the way. Lagos, Nigeria. Photo and caption © Basel Action Network.

 

 

 

 

A proposed ziggurat in Dubai (timelinks.org, 2009). © Timelinks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GreenScanner provides environmental impact reviews of consumer products via mobile phones. © 2008 IEEE.

Monday Eye Candy: Climate Refugees

 

Today's eye candy comes from Climate Refugees by Collectif Argos, which features 171 color photos. Happy Monday!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 2005. New Orleans. Post-Katrina chaos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even several kilometres from the shore, the lake is never over head-height.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 2005. New Orleans. Post-Katrina chaos. An inhabitant exiled in West Virginia returns to her house fifteen days after the hurricane to salvage whatever she can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Sometimes when the landuntern arrive unexpectedly, they carry away with them hay that was freshly cut earlier on a beautiful summer's day, or worse, they drown a few cows or sheep that we didn't have time to get to safety."