Republished with permission from the January issue of the Ester Republic.

This January marks the third calendar year that I’ve written the column for the ER, and though I have often mentioned or drawn upon the writings of others, I have never come right out and provided a legitimate, start-to-finish book review. It always seems a bit pedantic when a columnist chooses to write a book review solely for the sake of, well, writing a review. Book reviews should be transparent, authorless, written only for one of two reasons: either for the purpose of making more people aware of a work that might change the way they think about the world, even if just a very small piece of it (like the one I review below), or to provide a counter-perspective on a work that, if left unchallenged, might do real damage through misinformation (think Michael Crichton’s State of Fear). Of course, inescapable are the assumptions by the writer that 1) people care what they think and 2) they are qualified to identify books that should be suggested and books that should be challenged. But, I figure if you are reading this column, then you have already admitted a marginal interested in my opinion, and that being the case, I imagine you will allow me some liberty on number 2.

Where our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov’s Quest to End Famine, by Gary Paul Nabhan, is the gift I wish to share with you this month. (more…)