Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) | 
| Authors: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.98
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Avg. Customer Rating:  225 reviews
Sales Rank: 126
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0060852569
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.0973
EAN: 9780060852566
ASIN: 0060852569
Publication Date: May 1, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new book. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling books online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080512000933T
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| Also Available In:
| • | Hardcover - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life | | • | Audio CD - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle CD: A Year of Food Life | | • | Paperback - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle LP | | • | Audio Cassette - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Library Edition | | • | Audio CD - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Library Edition | | • | Audio Download - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (Unabridged) | | • | Kindle Edition - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle | | • | Hardcover - ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE: A YEAR OF FOOD LIFE |
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Product Description
Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 220 more reviews...
 Great memoir, great information April 17, 2008
I cannot get enough of this book. It has completely changed the way that I look at food. I work in food policy, but this book taught me a lot of things I didn't know and inspired me to shop locally more often. I've even started a small vegetable garden!
Many of the reviewers seem not to have gotten the point of this book. We are slowly killing ourselves and our culture with our reliance on industrialized foods. Current skyrocketing prices are one proof. We use up so many resources to get our food from point A to point B when we should be eating within our environment as much as possible. Food travels from country to country, and losing the depth and variety we could be having locally.
Barbara Kingsolver is a gifted writer and this memoir about HER experience is beautiful. It's not a treatise on "live my exact life;" it's about making changes that can have worldwide implications.
A fabulous book: but not her typical April 16, 2008
If you expect a typical Kingsolver book, you will be disappointed. But if you put that aside, this is a fabulous book! She catches the current movement towards sustainable living and shows us the practicalities as well as what it means for farmers around the country. I love the familial collaboration with her husband providing more scientific information and her eldest daughter providing recipes (which are delicious, by the way). I really think this is an important book because it makes this lifestyle accessible for people who are not environmental extremists (or who grew up on farms where this information would be 'old hat') but who want to do what they can to make a difference: not only to the environment but also for the nation's farmers, who lead a very difficult life. And as a bonus, the food is fresher (=tastier).
 Big Disappointment April 14, 2008
Let me start off with full disclosure: I am a huge Barbara Kingsolver fan. I've read most of what she's written and loved all of that. Except this.
She just can't quit lecturing throughout the entire thing. She can't even finish a small story without interspersing it intolerable amounts of pedagogy. It's really just one lecture after another. Perhaps if I were interested in, but not knowledgeable about, the subject matter I would be more forgiving. But I have to think that folks who are reading this book are already at least baseline knowledgeable. So why is she lecturing us all? We're the good guys. We already agree. Enough, already. We really want to hear how you did it, what you thought about it, the ups, the downs, the turkeys.
So, those looking for another tremendous Kingsolver story: Be Warned.
Wanted to like this book, but... April 13, 2008
This book starts out sooooo pedentic... then picks up some. I loved many of her other books, but this one is almost a chore to finish. In this genre, I highly recommend 'The Omnivore's Dilemma', which traces meals from the farm to the table.
A fun read with a message you can argue with April 13, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
If I had never read another work of Kingsolver's, this one alone would have turned me into an instant fan, though the truth is I already love her fiction. I found this book funny and warm, if read as a "country adventures" sort of book and not as a bible to living right. I especially loved the recipes, and the "turkey sex" section is hilarious (BTW, artifically inseminating poultry is no big deal. Takes only minutes to learn, as birds aren't too fussy).
The dry and / or preachy parts were mostly her husband's writing, and I found myself skipping over a lot of that, as it was way too much preaching to the choir. Being already involved in many of the cooking and cultivation aspects mentioned in this book, and I found a wealth of inspiration and new ideas here. I envy their complete immersion in a lifestyle that I can only partially indulge in due to career and location issues. I think the message here is that one does what one can under their life circumstances.
That being said, I found that many of the "facts" listed to be of questionable accuracy, in need of further explanation, casualties of faulty logic, or just plain strange, such as the statement that "no part of a corn plant is a natural food for cattle". By that logic, tomatoes, potatoes, and chocolate are not natural foods for people either. This is not a criticism of the book but normal scientific process: no two experts in any field will agree on everything.
I also think there is a bit too much pie-in-the-sky idealism here. Raising so-called 'organic' food takes a huge amount of time, space, and physical effort, especially if livestock are involved. The nastier aspects of pests and diseases are skimmed over far too lightly: free-range poultry are far more likely to pick up internal parasites by eating earthworms, snails and other invertebrates than your confined chicken, and the parasite egg and larva burden of your average cow pasture would boggle your mind. This does not make 'organic' (a poorly defined term) a bad thing, just don't be surprised if you find a worm larva in the freshly laid egg from your free range chicken. It's rare, but it happens.
My own feeling is that we'd be far closer to saving the environment by not using any form of plastics, not owning or driving cars, and not having more than one child than worrying about eating locally, but those issues aren't even mentioned; no doubt the author felt they were beyond the scope of her intended message. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Take this book for its terrific entertainment value, and enjoy it hugely. I know I did.
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