Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

"As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain.

"Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ."

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."

Average Customer Rating:

A guide to change your eating

Customer Rating:

Barbara Kingsolver uses her very readable style to encourage us all on a journey to understand the effects of the standard American diet on our own health as well as the health of the earth. This book is a fun and heart-touching read that also contains great recipes and short insightful inserts regarding the negative impacts of the US agricultural and food production system. The authors provide hope that personal choice in selecting locally grown and natural whole foods can positively impact our future. It helped me make the move to a more healthy lifestyle. This book will also make a great gift for family and friends.

Great theme, Interesting Topics are sometimes lost in the Preaching

Customer Rating:

As some of the reviewers write, I, too, believe that the premise of this book is a good one - eat local - however, there has to be a better way to present this book than through a preachy tone. I kept reading, but also kept putting the book down, which is unusual for me. Our family tested our gardening skills this year and have grander plans for next year, albeit nothing like Ms. Kingsolver's foray. I kept reading this book because Ms. Kingsolver would throw in some really good information on certain topics (it would have been nice if she had created a plant chart as an appendix). The recipes were interesting to look at, but I'll probably only try one or two of them because it looks like I like a much spicier dish than Ms. Kingsolver's family (or maybe the spices were allowed because they weren't locally grown?). Apparently they are available on the book website, so you don't need to buy the book if you want to see the recipes. Cheese-making is something I'd like to explore thanks to reading this book. I might try adding to my bread ingredients too, thanks to Ms. Kingsolver's husband. So, all in all, I thought the book was interesting because I already was in the position to want to try some of the things that Ms. Kingsolver's family did. However, Ms. Kingsolver's presentation comes out very preachy, so those who just want to read the book for entertainment may find it too tedious.

Too much preaching	Customer Rating:
How to rate this book was difficult as there were portions that I enjoyed. But by the time the friend came to visit from Arizona and I heard again about the waste of gas to bring food I felt I had been preached to too much. A shortened version of this book would be better.

Local is better	Customer Rating:
This book is very inspiring for those who are unaware or unclear about how much buying produce from far away affects our environment, our farmers and biodiversity. I loved it, and starting following the principles - they make sense.

I love this book!	Customer Rating:
Barbara Kingsolver is such a fluid writer and as this book chronicles her families' year eating only locally grown foods, I was inspired to change the way I gather, prepare and consume our meals. I probably couldn't do right now what they did for a year but I am inspired and the recipes she shared were all very very good.