Books like Feeding Cahokia

After forty-two years with the North Dakota Geological Survey, Bluemle is well qualified to take both professional and lay readers through the geological ages that shaped modern-day North Dakota. I appreciate the way he skillfully covers the major regions of the state, such as the Missouri Couteau and the Red River Valley, with lavishly illustrated photos, maps, and diagrams. He also discusses the state’s considerable energy resources. 

Everything I need to know on this topic is in one paperback, and it is a convenient size for taking on a field trip!

This book is an absolute gem. I love it! Perhaps no other work has captured the majesty and recent history of this almost-extinct biome. Award-winning author John Madson’s poetic style won me over.

I am especially inspired by this description of the tallgrass prairie: “It was a flowing emerald in spring and summer when the boundless winds ran across it, a tawny ocean under the winds of autumn, and a stark and painful emptiness when the great long winds drove in from the northwest.”

I recall avidly skimming the text in the library soon after it came out. So many new ideas! I was especially excited with its presentation of the Indigenous management of plant habitats by the judicious use of fire.

From the Preface: “I hope that greater understanding of the stewardship legacy left us by California Indians will foster a paradigm shift in our thinking about the state’s past—particularly with regard to wildland fire.” Slowly, researchers across the Great Plains have begun to understand the complex relationship between climate, litter buildup, and human activity, and this book helped that understanding take root.

This book is full of information, but it is the personality of Buffalo Bird Woman (aka Waheenee, ca 1839-1932) that makes the reading so delightful. America’s best-known Native gardener was launched to fame by the Presbyterian minister and anthropology student Gilbert Wilson (1868-1930), whose extensive interviews of her and her family were incorporated into his dissertation, published as Agriculture of the Hidatsa: An Indian Interpretation.

Renamed and published in book form for posterity, this complete and detailed story of Hidatsa agriculture is historically instructive, and Buffalo Bird Woman’s occasional commentary on the social relations of the Hidatsa people adds to its warmth. 

Anyone intrigued by the ingenuity involved in farming will be fascinated by this time in American history when farming moved from mere subsistence to offering a marketable surplus. Initially, a farmer's concern was modest: first to “raise sufficient corn for the family and their livestock; next, to be assured of an abundant supply of pork.” But as methods improved, there was soon plenty to take to market. A flatboat traveling from Indiana to New Orleans in 1826 could boast 18 barrels of whiskey, 70 barrels of oats, 8,000 pounds of pork, and 300 barrels of corn. 

Unfortunately, demand could tempt producers to abuse: Milk delivered to New York might be shamefully watered down and colored with chalk. World demand for sugar, tobacco, and cotton production fueled slavery, whose brutal conditions this book does not ignore.

I appreciated how Tanielian so sensitively and expertly described the human tragedy of World War I in the Middle East.

She demonstrates how the Ottoman homefront was affected by wartime politics, disease, and ecological disaster. When you read this book, you will see the importance of the civilian side of living through a global conflict. It really was a lived experience that continues in the memory of those living in the region.

I like this one because it reveals what is wrong with modern meat production, not only within the broad context of industrial agriculture but also the governmental policies and corporate control of what we eat.

It ranges widely from corporate control of plant and animal genetics to who raises what we eat and dictates where and how it is grown, to the chemicals that go onto our fruits and vegetables and into our bodies, to government oversight and regulation of food safety and animal welfare; to corporate concentration at every link in the food chain.

But what I appreciate most of all is Hauter’s extensive and thoughtful analysis of what can be done to break up the foodopolies and rebuild a healthy and just food system.

Twelve-year-old Emmaline and her mother are desperate for help with their farm and agree to take on Angus who has just been released from a hospital for patients with mental illness. At first they have the same fears and prejudice as people in town, but they come to learn that Angus is gentle and extremely knowledgeable. Thanks to him they have the best crop they’ve ever had. The most heroic point in the story is when one of the locals, Harry Record, leaves Angus far from town during a snowstorm with the expectation he will die. But as Angus struggles for safety he finds Harry’s little boy who was accidentally stranded in the storm and near death and gets him to the hospital in time to save his life. 

Quote: "That man is from the mental, stay away from him." 

This book was lovely to read because it was written… show more.

Giant corporations control every sector of our economy. Nowhere is this more evident than in what we eat and drink. Controlling these corporations are families about which we know very little. This book pulls back the curtain to reveal the families that created these food empires.

I knew how Cargill captured the grain market, and Walmart muscled its way to the top of the grocers’ mountain. But I had no idea that an obscure German holding company came to dominate what I thought were independent coffee and bakery chains or how the company whose name is on the out-of-season berries in the produce aisle doesn’t really grow them at all. If you are a foodie, Barons will open your eyes and probably turn your stomach. It sure did mine. 

While several books have been written about the horrors of industrial livestock production, none have moved me more than Blanchette’s Porkopolis.

With unforgettable stories and startling photographs, Blanchette details how workers perform all manner of intimate tasks to make industrial pigs reproduce and stay alive. I also love how he flips common-sense ideas of efficiency on their heads, showing how industrial meat production is anything but wasteful. Every bit of those pigs is used somewhere to the extent you wish they weren’t.

I have taught this book three times in my politics of food classes, and it never fails to blow my students away.