Rating: 
Summary: A New Mental Map
Review: *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 clichéd 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.
Rating:
Summary: risking hope
Review: Be careful. This book could change your life. The people you meet and the ideas you encounter here will challenge your perceptions about the world and the choices you make every day, not only about the food you eat but about the other priorities in your life as well. This dynamic mother/daughter team use their journeys through five continents to introduce to you people and communities who have broken out of their boxes, who have chosen to create life-sustaining alternatives to corporate globalization. You meet today's pioneers in Brazil, Kenya, Bangaladesh, Kerala, Michigan, The Netherlands who have transformed their lives and their communities into vibrant greenhouses of sustainable democracy. But even more important than these inspiring examples of the possibilies for nurturing our planet, as well as ourselves, the Lappes provide us with new ways of thinking about the mental prisons in which most of us live our daily lives. They ask us, why do we as a society blithly permit hunger and suffering and disease in the lives of others on our small planet that we as individuals abhor and would never permit? Why do we daily make choices that run counter to our inner values? Their answer is that we habitually make invalid assumptions about the way life must be. They uncover several powerful "mind traps" that, like landmines, keep us fearful of choosing different pathways. They show us that we, like the remarkable people we meet in this book, can choose more caring, sustainable and hopeful lives by simply having the courage to choose a new possibility. This is not a cookbook, even though it has many recipies for delicious vegetarian dishes from some of the world's greatest chefs. Rather it is a map of the Lappe's journeys to greener, more hopeful pastures than most of us have imagined. This is a journey that you too will be tempted to follow. So, be careful. Don't buy this book unless you are ready to choose a new and different life for yourself and your community. You are forewarned.
Rating: 
Summary: Hopelessly hopeful, and maybe that's the problem
Review: Frances Moore Lappe has nothing more to prove to anyone, as her considerable contributions to humanity are beyond all doubt. When she first published *A Diet for a Small Planet,* her messages related to the wastefulness of a meat-centered food system were stunningly revolutionary. The materials she has contributed since related to the myths surrounding world hunger have also been marvelously convincing, and well-researched. Bravo to her! In this updated version of her first and still highly important work, Lappe (and her daughter) have updated much of the alarming information related to politically perpetuated malnutrition coexisting with obesity, wasted grain, and the ecological perils of an food system dominated by large corporations. There are new vegetarian recipes, as well, and that's terrific. However, there comes a point where some portions of the same old message can become hackneyed and even tiresome. The truth is that despite the contributions of Lappe and others over the past few decades, the world food system actually has moved in the wrong direction. More people than ever want to consume a meat-dominated diet, there are more dangerous chemicals than ever being dumped into our ecosystems, and the massively capitalized, juggernaut-like genetics engineering initiative rolls onward, positively frightening in its Frankenstein-esque implications. So where is the "hope" in all of this? Lappe and her daughter try to inspire us by describing a small number of positive food-related experiments from around the world. These are interesting, and the authors describe them from a first-person perspective in lucid and entertaining fashion. However, what I find irksome is the notion that we readers actually are supposed to find a "basis for hope" in these pitifully isolated activities. The truth is there always will be a few visionaries/eccentrics/social rebels who will devote themselves to experimental projects that appear "revolutionary." This has been true for decades, if not centuries. How significant is this really, however, in light of the overwhelming trends that are carrying us in the opposite direction? One reason for my Scrooge-like attitude here is that I am quite familiar with one of the examples used, the "Edible Schoolyard" at King Middle School in Berkeley, California. One reason this project is so exuberantly ballyhooed is that it is the brainchild of the Infallible Alice Waters, who has delivered Exquisitely Pure and Pricey food for the toney elite at her Chez Panisse restaurant for decades now. The truth is that whereas the Edible Schoolyard is interesting and provides a modicum of educational value for some middle school students, it is largely irrelevant even to life-in-general at King Middle School. Students there are just as addicted to fast food and junk food as kids anywhere else, and the number of students whose lives are "changed" by this project is strikingly small. I suspect the same is true of the rest of these projects, as well. There inevitably are a few purehearts who are True Believers, plus a few others who take note and make some marginal changes in their own lives. But overall, these "hopeful" experiments are almost pathetic in their overall irrelevance to the mainstream world food system. My quarrel with the authors, then, is not with anything in particular regarding their research, their overall choice of topics, or their goals (which are laudable, certainly!) No, I take issue with their almost desperately upbeat tone/message with its absurdly naive-seeming dosage of "hope" based on consumer gestures, tiny organic experimental plots, and tasty vegetarian recipes. I can just visualize millions of well-fed Americans feeling sooo good about themselves and the global future based on their new-found allegiance to Chez Panisse cookery and a vow to swear off Big Macs. This simply will not do. Given the horrors of what's going on politically and economically in this world currently, it might well be time for more exhortation toward basic political activism and hard-nosed resistance to the machinery of corporate domination, and less clinging to the false "hope" provided by tiny edible schoolyard plots in Berkeley.
Rating:
Summary: Pushing the edge of hope a little further
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: Foreward Thinking Visionaries
Review: 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 U S 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.
Rating:
Summary: Foreward Thinking Visionaries
Review: Hope's Edge : The Next Diet for a Small Planet
by Frances Moore Lappe, Anna Lappe picks up where Diet For A Small Planetleft 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 U S 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.
Rating:
Summary: Honest Hope
Review: 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 porlbmes 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."
Rating:
Summary: FINDING HOPE'S EDGE
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: an inspiration to change your perceptions
Review: I have felt deeply moved and inspired reading "Hope's Edge". Travelling with Fances and Anna Lappé 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 Lappé will accompany me for many years to come.
What an interesting, exciting, wonderful book!
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