Books

Portraits and essays of 80 individuals and the food that fuels them over the course of a single day. With camera and notebook in hand, Peter and Faith traveled to 30 countries and more than a dozen U.S. states to shop, cook, and eat with a strikingly diverse range of people, including an Egyptian camel broker, a Japanese sumo wrestler, a Sudanese refugee in Chad, a Tibetan yak herder, a Bangladeshi factory seamstress, an Arctic hunter, an Indian Hindu sadhu, a Namibian diamond polisher, and a wounded Iraq war veteran. The centerpiece of each photoessay is a portrait of the subject with that day’s worth of food, a text about daily life, and an exhaustively researched food list detailing every item consumed, along with the total calorie count. Adding context to the profiles are essays from Wendell Berry, Mary Collins, Michael Pollan, Ellen Ruppel Shell, Bijal P. Trivedi, Richard Wrangham, and Lisa R. Young that approach food politics and our endless obsession with diet. This visual and textual feast highlights the similarities as well as the extreme differences in the ways that we approach and consume food around the world. Compelling, informative, and sometimes disturbing, What I Eat provides more than simple food for thought; it reveals the implications of the modern diet for our personal health and for our planet while challenging the tacit assumptions hidden in our daily fare.

Sixteen of the world’s foremost photographers traveled to thirty nations around the globe to live for a week with families that were statistically average for that nation, and at the end of the week, make a family portrait with all their possession outside their home. At the end of each visit, photographer and family collaborated on a remarkable portrait of the family members outside their home, surrounded by all of their possessions—a few jars and jugs for some, an explosion of electronic gadgetry for others. Vividly portraying the look and feel of the human condition everywhere on Earth, this internationally acclaimed bestseller puts a human face on the issues of population, environment, social justice, and consumption as it illuminates the crucial question facing our species today: Can all six billion of us have all the things we want?

A testament to the indomitable power of the human spirit, Women in the Material World portrays the striking similarities and profound differences in women's lives on the eve of the twenty-first century. Under the direction of Faith D'Aluisio and Peter Menzel, a team of renowned women journalists traveled the world to take a closer look at the lives of women in twenty disparate lands. All too often, the picture of the planet we carry around with us-a picture formed of our own experiences and the stream of information from the mass media-is at odds with what is real and important. The world is much more diverse, sorrowful, and splendid than the white-washed and overwhelmingly present stereotypes many of us have in our heads. And it is much more female-there's a whole half of the world that is waiting to beheard from. It's hard to know what a real protrait of what's out there would look like, hard to imagine what a symphony composed of all the world's voices would sound like. But this book may well be an indication.

Around the world, scientists and engineers are participating in a high-stakes race to build the first intelligent robot. Many robots already exist -- automobile factories are full of them. But the new generation of robots will be something else: smart machines that act like living creatures. When they are brought into existence, science fiction will have become fact. What will happen then? With our prosthetic limbs, titanium hips, and artificial eyes, we are already beginning to resemble our machines. Equally important, our machines are beginning to resemble us. Robots already walk, talk, and dance; they can react to our facial expressions and obey verbal commands. When they take the next step and become fully autonomous, what will they do? Will we be partners or rivals? Could we meld into a single species -- Robo sapiens? In Robo sapiens, Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio present the next generation of intelligent robots and their makers. Accompanying brilliant photographs of more than one hundred robots is an account of the little-known, yet vitally important scientific competition to build an autonomous robot. Containing extensive interviews with robotics pioneers, anecdotal "field notes" with behind-the-scenes information, and easy-to-understand technical data about the machines, Robo sapiens is a field guide to our mechanical future.

The team behind the critically and popularly acclaimed anthropological photoessays MATERIAL WORLD and WOMEN IN THE MATERIAL WORLD make their debut on our list with this oddly tantalizing book about a subject that's creeping into prominence: insects as food for people. With the distinctive blend of thoughtful cultural inquiry, intrepid exploration, and sumptuous photography that has earned them worldwide renown, the authors document the practice and history of entomophagy around the globe, discovering that insects are a nutritious, plentiful, and varied food source. From Mexico, where people celebrate the annual Jumile Festival with bug hunts and beauty queens, to China, where whole families make their livings from scorpion ranches, over a dozen bug-eating countries (including the USA!) are profiled in MAN EATING BUGS. Each chapter examines a culture through a stunning array of location photos, interviews with locals, and highlights from the authors' field journals, as well as carefully photographed indigenous recipes. A colorful, beautiful, and intelligent book.