Fans pick 100 books like Operation Chowhound

Nowhere is the phrase "stranger than fiction" more appropriate than in describing Agent Zigzag. Charming British conman Eddie Chapman turned himself into one of the best double agents his country ever produced. But for whom was he really working? None of his handlers seemed to be sure. His squirming loyalties allowed him to keep a family and a mistress, to remain alive despite interrogation by both sides, and earn an Iron Cross from Germany's Abwehr and a pardon from MI5 for blowing up a British factory. I was astonished by this tale, and left wondering if Chapman, in the end, just worked for Chapman.

Strange, sick, and if this doesn't constitute animal cruelty I don't know what does, Project X-Ray planned to strap incendiaries to bats and drop them to roost on Tokyo's roofs, burning down the city and shortening the war. A dentist who had explored New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns conceived this idea, then approached the White House, where President Roosevelt surprisingly said, “This man is not a nut."  

The military duly tested the plan, and the bats burned down a brand-new airbase, effectively sending the project up in flames. And a good thing, too. I shudder to imagine the anxiety of a crew ordered to fly a planeful of explosive bats all the way to Japan.

It's probably good that we haven't heard more of Fu-Go, because if we had, it would mean the aerial bombs sent over from Japan succeeded in spreading fire and terror across North America. Near the end of World War II, Japan launched high-altitude hydrogen balloons armed with incendiary bombs. They were designed to fly westward on the winds of the upper atmosphere and burn both American forests and Americans. 

Made by Japanese schoolgirls who manufactured the balloons by the thousand, the exercise was ultimately a failure, causing only one reported incident. I suspect, though, that others were covered up to avoid panic, and this is a plot point in one of my own books.

This is one of the most tricky, macabre, and yet human deception plans in World War II. The sheer cleverness involved as an Allied team, including James Bond creator Ian Fleming, created a pretend Marine, fake invasion plans, and a non-existent crash as part of an operation to trick the Germans reads like fiction.

The gamble had real-life consequences. If the operation had failed, the invasion of Sicily would have cost many more Allied lives and probably delayed the end of the war. While there have been older accounts of the events, Ben McIntyre is a talented and credible journalist and historian who often focuses on tales of espionage. Every time I read this one, I wonder:  How did they pull that deception off? 

This book records the memories of the devastation and loss of the famine survivors, providing grass-root evidence of the man-made catastrophe.

Zhou traveled to many provinces to search and interview the survivors, with a focus on nine that were worst hit by the famine. It is emotionally hard for a survivor to recall past miseries. It is even harder, indeed emotionally traumatizing, for a researcher to go through many miseries of the survivors to get this book compiled. I admire her courage and resilience. 

When I began my career as a professor at Colorado State University I knew my responsibility was to study the kinetics of herbicide degradation and soil and develop systems for weed control in agronomic crops.

During my academic career at Cornell University and Oregon State University no one ever suggested I should take class in philosophy or that agriculture had moral problems. I knew and my professors emphasized agriculture was a worthy and essential human endeavor.

When I first became acquainted with William Aiken and he introduced me to his book my view of agriculture began to change. I realized the value and essential role of moral philosophy to agriculture. I know I was viewed as a traitor to my discipline, but Aiken's book convinced me there was something wrong.

As a professor and educator I had a responsibility to begin to study and write about agricultural ethics.

I first read Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture (published in 1977) in high school.

In Bringing It to the Table, Berry shares excerpts of his essays exploring what has shaped farming and food in the last four decades: the declining state of American agriculture, the dangers of industrialized food farming, and the importance of farming to the human community – for body, mind, and soul.

This book cuts deep into food, one of the most important issues of our century because it impacts climate change, resource depletion, financial insecurity, and health issues created by poor food choices. 

This is the real title of the book, referring to the year 1493 AD.

Even as a plant biologist, I had no idea how much Columbus’ trips across the Atlantic Ocean scrambled the world's living species. The flora and fauna of the world today look nothing like they did beforehand.

I’m not particularly a foodie, but this book was an eye-opener.

Carwyn Graves takes us on a historical and topographical journey around Wales uncovering one of its best-kept secrets, its traditional and inventive cuisine. I discovered that there is definitely more to Welsh cooking than the famous Welsh rarebit or even the ubiquitous Welsh cakes (enjoyable though they are).

The book is structured around key foods from the Welsh menu, including Bara/Bread, Caws/Cheese, and Cig Oen/Lamb. The emphasis is on fresh natural foods, though the final chapter on Sglodion/Chips rather gives the game away.

A number of years ago, when I was reading through a folder of antislavery petitions at the National Archives, I found a misfiled petition asking for federal funding for an agricultural college in Iowa. Ariel Ron demonstrates how this misfiling illustrates a larger story that runs from agriculture in the early republic to the post-Civil War federal bureaucracy, through the priorities of northern farmers: improvement and justice.

Rather than an industrial behemoth, the pre-Civil War North was dominated by farmers who wanted to modernize their production and who moved from a diffuse program of reform to a campaign for federal funding for state agricultural colleges. Already hostile to slavery, they resented the power of southern planters in Congress who consistently blocked their petitions.

Thus, one of the results of the outbreak of war would be the triumph of a long campaign, deeply entwined with antislavery opinion, that resulted in the… show more.