Books by Mark Winne

Food Town, USA

Seven Unlikely Cities that are Changing the Way we Eat

Look at any list of America’s top foodie cities and you probably won’t find Boise, Idaho or Sitka, Alaska. Yet they are the new face of the food movement. Healthy, sustainable fare is changing communities across this country, revitalizing towns that have been ravaged by disappearing industries and decades of inequity. What sparked this revolution? To find out, Mark Winne traveled to seven cities not usually considered revolutionary. He broke bread with brew masters and city council members, farmers and philanthropists, toured start-up incubators and homeless shelters.

The cities of Food Town, USA remind us that innovation is ripening all across the country, especially in the most unlikely places.

“Mark Winne’s Food Town, USA is a tasty, heartwarming journey through towns we’d never thought much of but suddenly want to move to. It happily reminds us that when we devote ourselves to people and places we care about, wonderful and unexpected things seem to happen.”
(Mark Bittman, author of the How to Cook Everything series, Food Matters, and VB6: Eat Vegan Before)

Food Town, USA may prove to be the most hopeful and important book to take the food movement out of the predictable culture wars between big city and forgotten countryside, between blue and red, and between glamorous and unfashionable places. Whether it’s craft beer or food sovereignty, Winne gives voice to those who are reinventing the food movement in their own language.”
(Richard McCarthy, Executive Committee, Slow Food International)

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Stand Together or Starve Alone

America has a perplexing, multifaceted problem that combines hunger, obesity, and unhealthy food. This book examines how this situation was created and shows how people working together can resolve this longstanding issue.

The United States—one of the world’s wealthiest and resource-richest nations—has multiple food-related problems: declining food quality due to industrialization of its production, obesity across all age groups, and a surprisingly large number of households suffering from food insecurity. These issues threaten to shorten the lives of many and significantly reduce the quality of life for millions of others. This book explores the root causes of food-related problems in the 20th and 21st centuries and explains why collective impact—the social form of working together for a common goal—is the method that needs to be employed to reach a successful resolution to hunger, obesity, and the challenges of the industrial food system.

Authored by Mark Winne, a 45-year food activist, the book begins with background information about the evolution of the U.S. food movement since the 1960s that documents its incredible growth and variety of interests, organizations, and sectors. The subsequent sections demonstrate how these divergent interests have created a lack of unity and constitute a deterrent to achieving real change and improvement. Through examples from specific cities and states as well as a discussion of group dynamics and coalition-building methods, readers will come away with an understanding of a complicated topic and grasp the potential of a number of strategies for creating more cohesion within the food movement—and realizing meaningful improvements in our food system for current and future generations.

You can purchase this book for 20% off by ordering directly from the publisher. Use promo code Q11820 during checkout.

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NOTE TO MEDIA: Review copies are available for members of print/online journals, radio, and TV media.


Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas

Mark Winne’s second book, Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture takes on the universal struggle between human freedom and authority in its relationship to food. While drawing from great thinkers like Emerson and Dostoevsky to frame his arguments, Winne moves quickly from philosophy to action with numerous stories about “local doers.” From urban gardening heroes in Cleveland, to feisty farmers in New England, to lower income mothers in Texas, Winne shows how people are reclaiming their connection to their food, health, land, and governments. Along the way he finds people of every stripe whose refusal to accept their fate harkens back to a classic form of American individualism, one that has proven itself able to fight back against systems that not only want to conquer our wallets, but also hope to control our minds.

Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin’ Mamas challenges us to go beyond eating local food to become part of a larger solution that demands a system that sustains not just our bodies, but also our souls.

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Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty

American society has never been as fair as we might think. Though a land of opportunity and great fortune for some, we have never been a nation able to fully confront, let alone resolve, our social and economic inequalities and disparities. Food, like air and water, is a basic necessity, but stands as a glaring example of how the gap between this country’s “haves” and “have-nots” remains deep and wide. No matter what aspect of the subject we consider — hunger, obesity, or the latest food trends like local and organic — food is emblematic of a promise fulfilled for some but falling ever so short for many.

Closing the Food Gap tells the story of how we get our food: from poor people at food pantries or bodegas and convenience stores to the more comfortable classes, who increasingly seek out organic and local products. Winne’s exploration starts in the 1960s, when domestic poverty was “rediscovered,” and shows how communities since that time have responded to malnutrition with a slew of strategies and methods. But the story is also about doing that work against a backdrop of ever-growing American food affluence and gastronomical expectations.

Closing the Food Gap reveals the chasm between the two food systems of America-the one for the poor and the one for everyone else. Mark Winne offers compelling solutions for making local, organic, and highly nutritious food available to everyone.”
– Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace

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How to Order “Food Rebels” or “Closing the Food Gap”

Ordering may be done through Beacon Press at beacon.org or through your local bookseller and amazon.com.  For special sales and bulk order discounts, please contact Dani Perea at (617) 948-6573 or dperea@beacon.org.

To find an independent bookstore near you visit http://www.indiebound.org/indie-store-finder, or browse to: