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While the news cycle has been relentless of late, the holiday season invites us to take a pause and turn inward, toward the people we love. To enhance this slower time, we at Civil Eats offer our annual Holiday Book Guide.

After careful review, we have selected a stimulating and eclectic collection of memoirs, guides, scientific and cultural explorations, oral histories, and journalistic investigations. Our choices include a science-based explanation of how food both nourishes and harms us; a collection of narratives from New York City immigrant food workers; and a memoir that weaves together the story of an aspiring farmer and a woman who farmed in her region several generations ago.

We offer a mix of cookbooks as well that dig deep into culture, including historian Michael Twitty’s guide to Southern cuisine and chef Sean Sherman’s expansive collection of Indigenous recipes, focused on precolonial ingredients, many still available today. We’d also like to point you to our recent interview with nutritionist (and Civil Eats advisor) Marion Nestle, in which we explore her current masterwork, What to Eat Now.

Whether you use our recommendations to guide your gift giving or your own reading, we hope the list delights and informs you and your loved ones over the coming weeks.

The Accidental Seed Heroes: Growing a Delicious Food Future for All of Us** By Adam Alexander**

Seed breeding is often associated with genetic engineering, but not all seed breeding is bad. In his new book The Accidental Seed Heroes, U.K.–based seed saver Adam Alexander—who published The Seed Detective* *in 2022—blends popular science and the personal stories of independent seed breeders, whom he considers the unsung heroes of the global food system.

The book takes us on a journey from Ethiopia and Albania to Copenhagen and Oregon’s Willamette Valley, connecting us with freelance and open-source plant scientists who are breeding seeds and making them available to everyone. By contrast, the great majority of seed varieties are owned and controlled by universities, the government, and agribusiness firms.

Despite their diverse backgrounds and cultures, the seed savers spotlighted in this book share a passion for conservation, food security, and a diversity of edible crops bred for taste. We meet Lieven David, a breeder in Belgium known for creating Frillace, a blend between iceberg lettuce and endive, and Dr. Calvin Lamborn, a Utah-born plant virologist known for developing the Sugar Snap pea.

Alexander has a clear premise: “It’s the freelance breeders, amateur gardeners, and plant scientists who are making the greatest continuation,” he writes. Consumer involvement is also critical for a healthy food system: “We can all join in, all of us can be part of the solution through the choices we make as to what we eat, and if we have gardens, what we grow.” -Amy Wu

Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison** **By Leslie Soble with Alex Busansky and Aishatu R. Yusuf

In Eating Behind Bars, authors Leslie Soble, Alex Busansky, and Aishatu R. Yusuf of prison-reform nonprofit Impact Justice update and expand on their organization’s illuminating 2020 report about what we feed incarcerated people and efforts to treat food like the human right it is.

The first half of the book tracks the size and scope of the problem. There’s no easy way to convey the horrors of prison food, but examples like “maggots in the corn meal” and “spoiled milk and rotten meat” served on a regular basis start to get at the heart of it. Here’s a different point of reference for anyone who’s been in a public-school cafeteria recently: In 2024, the public school district in San Diego, California, paid $3.91 per lunch, per student. California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, meanwhile, paid about $1.40 per meal to feed its incarcerated population.

In the second half, Eating Behind Bars focuses on solutions—such as adopting Scandinavian countries’ rehabilitation-focused model that lets incarcerated people cook meals for themselves using produce grown at the prison and foods purchased at on-site grocery stores. Closer to home, they explore on-the-ground implementation of reforms in Maine’s state prisons and California’s San Quentin.

Although many of the solutions are only barely starting to take place—or in some cases consist of fighting to overturn recent rollbacks—Eating Behind Bars chronicles a movement in the early stages of making important changes in people’s lives. —Matthew Wheeland****

Finding Lights in a Dark Age: Sharing Land, Work and Craft** By Chris Smaje**

Farmer Chris Smaje’s Finding Lights in a Dark Age imagines a near-future dystopia caused by the violence of capitalism, which, he argues, is pervasive in Western society. Proposing a more agrarian, collective lifestyle, Smaje—who owns a small-scale farm in Somerset, England—uses his experience as a model for a brighter future, with a focus on locality. “People don’t own the Earth, he writes. “The Earth owns us.”

Smaje invites readers to take on a more intimate connection with the people and land around them. “Helping us find ways to survive and thrive,” he writes, requires renewing the idea of the commons, restoring farmlands and forests, and rethinking the role of state power.****

While the book is at times theory-heavy, with dense discussions of topics such as modern monetary theory, its rich sourcing is one of its greatest strengths. Throughout, Smaje is in active conversation with many authors working on similar topics. ****

However, he often seems strangely naïve, with proposals that are unlikely to scale and a failure to truly account for what happens to urbanites in this imagined future. For example, he glides over the need for some professions, like doctors, and does not fully address the fact that cities provide opportunities for art and cultural exchange that have inherent value. ****

The failure to adequately balance the merits of urbanism and agrarianism leaves the argument of the book feeling lopsided. That said, its core premise—that we cannot get through whatever lies ahead if we do not do it together—makes an essential case for building community now. —s.e. smith

Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us By Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall, PhD

“Nutrition isn’t rocket science, it’s much more difficult, and it affects our everyday lives,” write journalist Julia Belluz and renowned researcher Kevin Hall in this timely exploration of what happens when the body’s biological systems confront a food environment dominated by ultra-processed foods (UPFs). In the book, Hall describes his work on one of the most influential studies on UPFs to date—which showed people eat more and gain more weight eating UPFs—as well as his follow-up studies, in which he examines why, exactly, that happens.

The book is not about politics, but it will help readers make sense of the current, complicated, politicized national conversation about food and health, with riveting explanations of what science can tell us about how metabolism works, genetics’ role in obesity, and how hormonal signals tell us to eat (or stop eating). Hall does not address resigning from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) this spring, which he did after saying he felt unable to “freely conduct unbiased science” under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The authors turn to the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement only in the very last pages. They give MAHA credit for galvanizing interest and political will around connecting food with health and on UPFs in particular. But, they write, policy change should be guided by scientific research, which needs more public support—“not merely compelling narratives.” —Lisa Held

Ghosts of the Farm: Two Women’s Journeys Through Time, Land, and Community*** ***By Nicola Chester

This reported memoir beautifully weaves together the lives of two women with farming ambitions. The author, a celebrated nature and climate writer and a would-be farmer in rural southern England, traces the history of Julia White, who lived in her village decades before and was part of the Women’s Land Army, a group of women who took over farm work for deployed soldiers during World War II.

Chester began farming on a ranch in Canada in the late 1980s. But, unable to find consistent farm work as a woman—or to afford starting her own farm—she built a life as a librarian, writer, and environmental activist. She learned about White while researching local land-use history and was struck by White’s community- and biodiversity-centered approach to agriculture.

In telling White’s story, Chester depicts farming in wartime Britain in great detail, immersing the reader in the techniques and tools of the time, including a blessing of the ploughs, the threat of foot-and-mouth disease, and the stress of U.S. and British troops practicing in the same fields where farmers were working.

The book vividly addresses the social challenges women farmers faced in the 1940s, and again, decades later, as the author tried to build her own farming career. Chester animates burning questions: What if women had stayed in farming after men came home from war? What if the chemical farming that became the norm had been avoided?

Ultimately, Chester comes to view herself as “a farmer of the imagination,” and her book, through the inspiring story of Julia White, plants seeds of awareness about what’s happening to the soil, plants, birds, and other animals as the climate changes. **—**Amy Halloran

The Last Supper: How to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis By Sam Kass

Readers interested in the realpolitik of food-system change will find an accessible and articulate guide in Sam Kass. In The Last Supper, the former personal chef of the Obama family recounts his elevation to a nutrition policy advisor, sharing stories of success and failure in the White House.

Kass’ well-chosen anecdotes offer valuable lessons for today’s food and agriculture activists far beyond the capital, where he led efforts on children’s health and nutrition. He emphasizes the importance of harnessing cultural moments, such as a high-school football team crediting its wins to healthier cafeteria food to build support for policy. And through the story of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which established free breakfast for students in low-income schools, he explains how grassroots activism can encourage lawmakers to support broader measures.

The son of a union leader, Kass is honest about the tensions between idealism and practicality, illustrated with real-world examples, like negotiations between the Obama administration and Walmart. Advocates for a better food system have no choice but to engage with deep-rooted power structures, he argues.

“Beat the shit out of them when they are not aggressively taking on climate and health,” he writes, “praise them when they make a genuine effort, work to push investors to take into account these other issues when they invest, and help create more and more demand for better products.” —Daniel Walton

Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth from Farm to Fable By Will Potter

Ubiquitous in Americana, red barns symbolize a bucolic existence where farming is in harmony with land and animals, and where farmers are humble stewards. This actually is true in the case of some farms. But as investigative journalist Will Potter posits, agricultural corporations misappropriate this narrative to hide what happens on factory farms, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). These CAFOs are marked by cramped cages, toxic waste ponds, air and water pollution, slaughter by suffocation—the list goes on.

In Little Red Barns, Potter digs into the insidious agribusiness collusion with lobbyists, elected officials, and even some farmers and scientists to preserve business as usual behind the red barn façade. He recounts his own trajectory, from his punk teen years, when he encountered animal activism for the first time, to his work as an award-winning journalist, when he came to understand how CAFO titans vilified activists (and journalists) in order to paint themselves as victims of “terrorism.” Backed by agribusiness, Potter writes how states passed “ag-gag” laws to suppress on-farm investigations, further blurring the lines between government and corporations.

Potter’s reporting takes him quite literally into the muck to explain big ag’s vigorous cover-up of “intersecting world-ending crises.” As agribusiness erodes civil liberties and censors information to conceal its role in climate change and environmental degradation, he shows how these actions have become a microcosm of the global rise of authoritarianism. But look behind that little red barn, Potter encourages, “and through our collective action—our shared testimony—we will write a new story.” —Leorah Gavidor

Living Off Grid: 50 Steps to Unplug, Become Self-Sufficient, and Build the Homestead of Your Dreams* *By Ryan Mitchell

With the cuts and threats to food assistance this year, you may be wondering how to become less dependent on outside sources for food. Ryan Mitchell gives you all you need to know in Living Off Grid. Going off-grid for Mitchell is a means of detaching your household from external systems for food, water, electricity, and other utilities. Mitchell built his own rural homestead—a tiny house, a vast garden, and a modest amount of livestock—on 11 acres in North Carolina.

Food independence is an essential reason to go off-grid, he says, especially given the fragility of the food system. Mitchell advises people to start slowly, “whittling away on your overall reliance on stores.” Start by looking at which foods you can access locally through community-supported agriculture (CSAs) or farmers’ markets (especially for meat)—and which you can grow yourself. You’re not likely to reach complete food independence, he says, but with diligence and patience, it’s possible to get close.

While this guide provides tips for city- and suburb-dwellers, like joining a community garden, it mostly focuses on setting up in rural areas, taking readers through the arduous processes of looking for and buying land, setting up the homestead, and building an off-grid life.

Mitchell advises that self-sufficiency isn’t just about you; it’s about tapping into community. “You won’t be able to do this alone, nor should you try,” he writes. Incorporating his own experience, he provides an excellent one-stop resource for anyone looking to disconnect from an increasingly unreliable food system and rely on themselves, and their neighbors, instead. *—*Elizabeth Doerr

Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity’s Favorite Food—and Our Future By Bruce Friedrich

Building a steak out of cultured animal cells or engineering a plant-based burger that behaves just like ground beef might be tall scientific challenges. But such projects are more feasible than changing human nature, Bruce Friedrich argues. The founder and president of the Good Food Institute, a think tank that champions “alternative proteins,” Friedrich is concerned about the impact of industrialized livestock on the climate, human health, and animal welfare. In Meat, he lays out a techno-optimistic vision for addressing those harms—not by curbing demand, but by replacing supply.

“Meat is just too visceral a desire, too culturally embedded, too normatively accepted” for modern society to reduce its consumption in any meaningful way, he argues. Instead, he calls for governments and businesses to invest in alternative proteins, as they have in digital infrastructure and renewable energy. While critics have questioned the sustainability and corporate consolidation of the alt-protein industry, Friedrich thinks it can improve technology and reduce prices to the point where alt-meats outcompete farm-raised flesh.

That Silicon Valley-style innovation, Friedrich adds, could free up land currently used for animal feed to practice high-value regenerative farming or agroforestry. Such changes would require an evolution in federal farm policy, he admits, a task “harder, I suspect, than anything else I’m suggesting in this book.” —Daniel Walton

Recipes from the American South By Michael W. Twitty

Culinary historian Michael Twitty’s new cookbook is a trove of knowledge focused on classic Southern dishes and culinary traditions, from cathead biscuits to Southern fried chicken to Hoppin’ John—and its lesser-known sibling, Limping Susan, made with okra. Twitty’s introduction describes the “multicultural gumbo” of the largest culinary region in the U.S., acknowledging the important contributions of women, Native people, enslaved Africans, and non-European immigrants.

“The politics of Southern food is omnipresent, baked in from the beginning,” he writes. “Southern food is soaked in Native removal, racial caste and social justice, gender roles, ability issues, sexuality, and class.”

Full of simple, elegant photographs, the book is a joy to explore. The James Beard Award–winning author organizes it by menu categories, from “Breads, Biscuits & Breakfasts” to “Desserts, Pies & Sweets,” and tops each recipe with a short but succulent explanation of the dish’s place in history and culture. Twitty covers pan-Southern classics like chicken and dumplings and sweet-potato pie as well as regional dishes like Gullah-Geechee pot roast and Maryland crab soup. (When it comes to barbecue sauce, he smartly pays homage to both sides of the eastern- and western-style rivalry in my home state of North Carolina.)

Certain recipes—for frog legs, turtle soup, and possum and sweet potatoes—probably won’t enter my regular repertoire, but I enjoyed learning each dish’s place in Southern cuisine (and Twitty offers substitutions to make them more accessible). Capturing the depth, breadth, and complexity of Southern food, this might be one of the most practical and delicious history books out there. —Christina Cooke

A School Lunch Revolution By Alice Waters

Nearly 20 years ago, Alice Waters, the visionary owner of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, wrote about her life’s other passion project. Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea* *grew out of her work at a local middle school, and made a fervent case for integrating gardening and cooking into school curricula, to awaken students not only to their lessons but also to the natural world.

Now Waters (who is also a member of the Civil Eats advisory board) has published a companion cookbook, A School Lunch Revolution, that proposes another way to transform school food: school-supported regenerative agriculture. In the introduction, she envisions schools buying food directly from organic, regenerative farmers and then cooking it in school kitchens, to boost farm income, climate resilience, and children’s health, too. It’s welcome encouragement at a time when schools are being pushed to give up ultra-processed foods—and a challenge, given this year’s cancellation of a federal farm-to-school program.

The book’s simple, healthy recipes exemplify what school meals could be like if they were based on local, regenerative agriculture: affordable, culturally diverse, delicious of course, and beautiful—because, Waters points out, “beauty is a language of care” that nourishes children’s spirits. Kid-friendly recipes like whole-leaf salads meant for dipping into dressings, buttermilk pancakes, carrot and cucumber sushi, and chile-braised pork tacos all keep these principles in mind.

Although A School Lunch Revolution only briefly suggests how, exactly, this ambitious vision could be implemented at scale (possibly through food hubs), it isn’t meant to be a detailed guide. Waters’ great strength has always been to light the way. —Margo True

The Self-Fed Farm and Garden: A Return to the Roots of the Organic Method By Eliot Coleman

What is organic food? Thirty-six years after organic-farming pioneer Eliot Coleman wrote his first book on the subject, he probes this question further in *The Self-Fed Farm and Garden. *Coleman argues that organic farming means understanding and working with the soil’s living organisms to enhance long-term sustainability. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has broadened its organic certification standards to include practices like hydroponic growing, which does not involve soil.

Part organic farming theory and part how-to, the book cites 19th- and 20th-century farmers who relied on “process, not products” for a “self-fed” farm. Though inputs for organic farming are widely available for purchase, Coleman advocates for “green manure” crops, which are grown on-site and can enhance soil fertility over time. He then lays out precisely how to achieve this on a small-scale farm, advising on everything from cover-crop choice to tools for sowing seeds.

Along the way, he offers glimpses of his early farm experiences (“none of us could afford tractors with plows”) and includes beautiful photos from his Four Season Farm in Maine, which illustrate these ideas in practice. Coleman helps us understand that every food choice is a decision about how we want to treat the soil. This makes The Self-Fed Farm and Garden an ideal book for curious eaters, food growers, and anyone who wishes to be a better steward of the land. —Laura Candler**

Turtle Island: Food and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America By Sean Sherman with Kate Nelson and Kristin Donnelly

When Sean Sherman was growing up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, he loved his family’s traditional meals but didn’t know much about the wider world of Indigenous food. Now a winner of multiple James Beard awards and founder of the celebrated Indigenous restaurant Owanmi, in Minneapolis, he’s traced his culinary awakening in Turtle Island, a triumph of a cookbook that explores Native cuisines, landscapes, and histories from Alaska to the Yucatan Peninsula.

Written with Kristin Donnelly and Civil Eats Contributor Kate Nelson, the book is named after the Indigenous term for North America. Each chapter covers a different region, diving into the sophisticated, sustainable, and diverse foodways that colonizers nearly destroyed. This is also a story of resilience and hope, describing an ancestral wisdom that continues to encourage living in balance with the land.

Those stories comes to the table through the recipes, all based on precolonial ingredients revitalized with modern techniques: smoked bison ribeye with a chimichurri of wild greens from the Great Plains; duck, wild rice, and cranberry sausage patties from the Great Lakes; lobster and corn salad in elderberry broth from the Eastern Woodlands; and more than a hundred others.

Although many ingredients must be foraged, grown, or hunted, Sherman offers alternatives for nearly all, and the stunning photographs make you want to rush to the kitchen and start cooking. Through food, this remarkable book foregrounds the vital presence of Native people in North America, to the benefit of everyone. —Margo True

Voices from the Kitchen: Personal Narratives from New York’s Immigrant Restaurant Workers Edited by Marc Meyer

Amid all the rhetoric and spin of national politics and policy around food, the voices of real-life people can easily be lost. Voices from the Kitchen, a collection of oral histories from immigrant restaurant workers in New York City, offers a welcome redress.

In the tradition of Studs Terkel, Marc Meyer, a chef whose own life has been one of itinerant work in many food fields, has put together stories from people who have come here from around the world—Mexico, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Burkina Faso, and more. In the process, he has assembled both a glimpse of present-day America and a robust description of the American experience over time.

As each person describes what it was like to come to America, they offer insight into foreign policy and immigration, along with their hopes and ambitions. Each story is deeply personal and moving. Vico, from Mexico, longs for his grandmother’s cooking. “You didn’t need to put anything on the tortilla, maybe a little salt,” he says. “The flavor was amazing.” In his restaurant work, he says, “I try to recreate that taste, that moment, that memory.”

Diana, from Colombia, leaves behind no-good men to make a better life for her daughters, and struggles to forgive her mother for past grievances. Along the way, she gains an insight we would all do well to remember: “I have been able to find great love for my mother, along with the realization that more is to be accomplished with love than with hate.”

In this collection, Meyer makes visible the lives of the people we too often take for granted and aims to “lift up these staff members who have lifted me up each day.” In that he has succeeded. —Brian Calvert

What is Queer Food? How We Served a Revolution*** ***By John Birdsall

Starting with the title of his book,* *author John Birdsall challenges his readers to question the role of cooking and eating in queer identity, exploring both the function of food within the LQBTQ+ community and how members of this community have transformed the culinary world.

To define “queer food,” Birdsall takes us through more than a century of history, sharing stories about distinct dishes and iconic gatherings. From the development of the chiffon cake in the bedroom-turned-makeshift-kitchen of Ohioan Harry Baker to the New York City restaurants of Esther Eng to James Baldwin’s Parisian parties, Birdsall acknowledges unrecognized accomplishments and shares exclusive invitations behind the scenes. He also remembers the nourishing meals that fueled the 1969 Stonewall Uprising and comforted people during the homophobic attacks of the Cold War. “Our food is not a connected web of dishes and foodways; it’s not a cuisine,” writes Birdsall. “It’s our determination to cook and eat together; to sustain ourselves and those we love; to keep strong enough to fuel hope.”

This book bears witness to queer history in all its highs and lows, from urban centers that have long offered havens for gathering to parts of the Midwest and South that were the birthplaces of gastronomic icons like Craig Caliborne and Richard Olney, whose journeys of self-acceptance and self-expression often led them elsewhere, carrying with them the flavors of home.

With this book, Birdsall honors the people who are too often forgotten in historical records, who threw fantastic parties, who endured so many funerals during the AIDS epidemic. He shows how, through it all, members of the LGBTQ+ community have come together around the table, connected by the food set upon it, to receive sustenance and celebrate queer joy. — Elena Valeriote

Wildcrafted Seeds and Grains: An Introduction to Extracting, Preparing, Storing, and Cooking with Common Wild Varieties By Pascal Baudar

Forager Pascal Baudar would like to remind us that we are surrounded by food, no matter where we live. While it is common to forage for mushrooms, herbs, or fruit, you can also find as many as 120 edible wild seeds and grains in Southern California, if you know where to look.

In Wildcrafted Seeds and Grains, Baudar aims to fill a gap in knowledge that has been lost over generations after colonization cut off Indigenous peoples from traditional foodways, and as modern ag reduced the need for foraging.

Baudar explains the basics of how to harvest and process wild varieties of oats, barley, nettle, amaranth, milk thistle, mustard, and other seeds and grains, along with the equipment you’ll need, profiles of common varieties, recipes, and historic examples of how our ancestors used these foods. Who knew that foxtails—those annoying little spiky balls that always get caught in my dog’s paws—are actually an edible grain, designed to be dispersed by attaching to passersby?

Besides helping you build a killer pantry, Baudar argues that foraging for wild seeds and grains provides a way to increase the diversity and nutrients in our diets, while also reconnecting us to the nature around us. —Tilde Herrera

Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain By Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa M. Mares

In their extensive examination of labor in the American food system, authors and food-systems scholars Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa M. Mares argue that a more sustainable, just, and healthy food system is contingent on improving labor conditions, as well creating connections between workers at every link in the supply chain.

In the U.S., approximately 24 million people perform paid work in the food system. This includes farmers, supermarket attendants, and restaurant servers, as well as those who transport food, whether toward our tables or toward the waste stream. Minkoff-Zern and Mares note that these statistics do not include those who are unpaid or unrecorded in nourishing our communities, such as mothers and undocumented farmworkers. “The food industry is one of the most underpaid jobs in the country, and it’s also the most undervalued,” says Fabiola Ortiz Valdez, director of organizing at the Food Chain Workers Alliance, in the book.

Will Work for Food offers critical historical context for our modern American food system, sheds light on the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, and paints the present moment with a mixture of realism and optimism. Building on past examples of successful labor activism, the authors envision a food system that moves away from exploitation toward both ecological and social justice.

“While the barriers to sustained and structural change feel overwhelming, there is no option but to believe that a more just food system is not only possible, but essential,” the authors write. The key, they argue, is a systems approach, with increased solidarity across sectors. The responsibility is ours to share: “Given that everyone must eat, all people must participate in making this change.” *— Elena Valeriote ***

Our Recent Books Coverage

What to Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters*** By Marion Nestle The renowned nutritionist’s new book helps us navigate a food system designed for profit over health.*

Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System** **By Nancy Matsumoto Author and long-time Civil Eats Contributor Matsumoto documents the efforts of women designing systems that benefit communities and the environment.

The Wisdom of the Hive: What Honeybees Can Teach Us about Collective Wellbeing** **By Michelle Cassandra Johnson and Amy Burtaine This book explores the short, selfless lives of honey bees, defined by mutual caretaking and attunement to the larger ecosystem.