Food Economics

This book explores the idea that table activities - the mealtime rituals of food preparation, serving, and dining - lay the foundation for a proper education on the value of civility, the importance of the common good, and what it means to be a good citizen. The arts of conversation and diplomatic speech are learned and practiced at tables, and a political history of food practices recasts thoughtfulness and generosity as virtues that enhance civil society and democracy.

On October 12, 2005, a massive fire broke out in the Wines Central wine warehouse in Vallejo, California. Within hours, the flames had destroyed 4.5 million bottles of California's finest wine worth more than $250 million, making it the largest destruction of wine in history. The fire had been deliberately set by a passionate oenophile named Mark Anderson, a skilled con man and thief with storage space at the warehouse who needed to cover his tracks.

The long war has brought hunger to Europe; some of her peoples stand constantly face to face with starvation. To meet all this great food need in Europe—and meeting it is an imperative military necessity—we must be very careful and economical in our food use here at home. We must eat less; we must waste nothing; we must equalize the distribution of what food we may retain for ourselves; we must prevent extortion and profiteering which make prices so high that the poor cannot buy the food they actually need; and we must try to produce more food.

Despite exponential growth in the fishing industry, the global wild fish catch reached a plateau and stagnated. As numerous scientific reports showed, many fish stocks around the world collapsed, creating a genuine global overfishing crisis. Analyzing the ramifications of overfishing for the United States by investigating how fishers, seafood processors, retailers, government officials, and others have worked together to respond to the crisis, historian Mansel G. Blackford examines how these players took steps to make fishing in some American waters sustainable.

The story of the "Lentil Underground" begins on a 280-acre homestead rooted in America's Great Plains: the Oien family farm. Forty years ago, corporate agribusiness told small farmers like the Oiens to "get big or get out." But 27-year-old David Oien decided to take a stand, becoming the first in his conservative Montana county to plant a radically different crop: organic lentils. Unlike the chemically dependent grains American farmers had been told to grow, lentils make their own fertilizer and tolerate variable climates, so their farmers aren't beholden to industrial methods.

This wide-ranging treatment of how money secretly influences our lives includes chapters on the many forms of money, why money is so easily worshipped, why money sometimes feels more important than life, hoarding money, the source of riches, inheritance, and the stock market. Crawford, a teller of entertaining tales, gathers stories and myths from around the world that help us understand why money is so much more than the useful tool that we may think it to be.

Do you really know what’s for dinner? The Blue Plate is the perfect dinner companion for food lovers who also care about the planet. Ecologist Mark Easter offers a detailed picture of the impact the foods you love have on the earth. Organized by the ingredients of a typical dinner party...

The economy isn’t just for the economists to debate on. All of us are affected by its ups and downs—global recession, rise in interest rates, or hike in food prices. But do we understand the principles at work and how and why they really affect us? Day to Day Economics is an...

Written by an eminent economist, Bimal Jalan, Emerging India: Economics, Politics and Reforms talks about India's growth from the post reform 1991 era to the modern days and the various challenges plaguing various arms of the government. In this book, Jalan praises the democratic setup that runs...

For more than 30 years, Hank Cardello was an executive and adviser to some of the largest food and beverage corporations in the world. For more than 30 years, he watched as corporate profits - and America's waistlines - ballooned: fattening consumers meant fattening profits. Now, in this fascinating and timely book, Cardello offers a behind-the-scenes look at the business of food.

Did you know that subsidized goods often cost us more than we'd pay for them in the free market? In fact, we sometimes pay for goods that will never exist at all. It turns out that the free market in America is anything but. How did a system designed to safeguard American farmers turn into the nation's biggest scam?Most of us don't know what subsidies are and don't think they affect us directly, so we tune out. But they have an enormous impact on all of us.

A bold yet realistic vision of how technology and social change are creating a food system in which we no longer use animals to produce meat, dairy, or eggs. Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals brought widespread attention to the disturbing...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A business leader and esteemed economic thinker outlines simple solutions to America’s five most pressing public policy issues, from healthcare to education to inequality. America today confronts a host of urgent problems, many of them seemingly intractable, but...

A bold, science-based corrective to the groundswell of misinformation about food and how it's produced, examining in detail local and organic food, food companies, nutrition labeling, ethical treatment of animals, environmental impact, and every other aspect from farm to table Consumers want to...

Wielding his widely recognized powers of explanation, Paul Krugman lays bare the hidden facts behind the $2 trillion tax cut. With huge budget surpluses just ahead, the question of whether to cut taxes has shifted to when? and by how much? With Fuzzy Math, Paul Krugman dissects the Bush tax...

One of the most powerful forces in business today is the positive psychology movement -- overcoming self-defeating attitudes and developing our talents and positive traits. Much of the new thinking stems directly from the concepts in Norman Vincent Peale's classic bestseller, The Power of...

"Starting with her years at the University of Texas Law School at Austin, Weddington, the attorney who won Roe v. Wade , traces the history of her involvement with this momentous Supreme Court case and its aftermath. She laments the ground that sometimes complacent pro-choice activists have lost...

From FSGO x Logic: anonymous interviews with tech workers at all levels, providing a bird's-eye view of the industry In Voices from the Valley, the celebrated writers and Logic cofounders Moira Weigel and Ben Tarnoff take an unprecedented dive into the tech industry, conducting unfiltered...

Born and raised in Athens, Greece, Agapi Stassinopoulos grew up surrounded by the stories and statues of ancient gods and goddesses. But it wasn't until she went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and started performing in plays that she discovered the goddesses in a personal...

For news junkies and fans of the bizarre-but-true, here is an outrageous collection of all-real, all-weird news stories culled from the nation's mainstream newspapers!...