Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet

The author of the classic Diet for a Small Planet and her daughter travel the world, discovering practical visionaries who are making a difference in world hunger, sometimes one village at a time.

Thirty years ago Frances Moore Lappé started a revolution in the way Americans think about food and hunger. Now Frances and her daughter, Anna, pick up where Diet for a Small Planet left off. Together, they set out on an around-the-world journey to explore the greatest challenges we face at the new millennium. Traveling to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, they discovered answers to the most urgent issue of our time: Whether we are able to transcend today’s consumerism and the isolation of “me-first” capitalism and find the paths that each of us can follow to heal our lives and the planet. Featuring nearly seventy recipes from celebrated vegetarian culinary pioneers-including Alice Waters, Mollie Katzen, Laurel Robertson, Nora Pouillon, and Anna Thomas-Hope’s Edge highlights true trailblazers engaged in social, environmental, and economic transformations.Thirty years after Frances Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet changed eating habits around the world, she and her daughter Anna bring us a new round of iconoclastic recommendations that break overwhelming issues down to a simple matter of personal choice. Hope’s Edge presents many of the same issues of the original title, but it also provides a wealth of new discoveries and possibilities in this era of genetically engineered foods, worldwide famine, and growing rates of obesity-related health issues.

Beyond discussing a wide range of reasons to become a vegetarian (and that means no fish or chicken either, folks), the authors introduce you to a number of individual reasons for hope–Bob, the Wisconsin cheese maker; Jean-Yves, the farmer from Brittany who created the Sustainable Agriculture Network; and Muhammad Yunas, who has changed the lives of countless living in poverty with his remarkable microcredit programs. Along with these stories and the theories they’re based on, you’ll also find luscious recipes calling for grains, fruits, vegetables, and a handful of dairy products that will delight your taste buds and your conscience.

The Lappes firmly believe that the choices of low-level consumers have the potential to make positive changes, both in the world economy and in our physical health. By eating a vegetarian diet, shopping with care, and cooking with love, we might all brighten our future tremendously. –Jill Lightner