8 /10 1 Votes
4.1/5 Barnes & Noble Publication date May 1, 2007 Pages 384 pp Originally published 1 May 2007 Genre Non-fiction | 4/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print (Paperback) ISBN 978-0-06-085255-9 Publisher HarperCollins Country United States of America | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Subject Food, Industrial agriculture, Organic food, Cooking, Memoir Awards James Beard Award for Writing and Literature, Book Sense Book of the Year Award for Adult Nonfiction Similar Works by Barbara Kingsolver, Food books, Non-fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007) is a non-fiction book by Barbara Kingsolver detailing her family's attempt to eat only locally grown food for an entire year.
The book revolves around the concept of improving the family's diet by eating only foods that her family was able to grow themselves or obtain locally (save for grains and olive oil). Kingsolver, along with her husband and daughters, start a farm in Virginia where they grow and can different varieties of tomatoes, learn about rooster husbandry, make cheese, and adjust to eating foods only when they are locally in season. The book contrasts this with the ecological costs of growing food in factory farms, transporting it thousands of miles, and adding chemical preservatives so it will not spoil.
An excerpt was published in the May/June 2007 issue of Mother Jones magazine, and is available online. There are also audio files of a May 16, 2007 discussion between Kingsolver and her husband at an hour-long presentation at a bookstore in Corte Madera, California.
Critical reception
Time magazine's Lev Grossman named it one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2007, ranking it at #7. Rick Bass wrote in The Boston Globe that "this text will fold quietly into the reader's consciousness, with affecting grace and dignity, because of its prose and sensibilities." and that "Kingsolver is no pious soapboxer, but instead explores these ideas with enthusiasm and the awe of discovery."