100 books like Stuffed and Starved

By Raj Patel,

Here are 100 books that Stuffed and Starved fans have personally recommended if you like Stuffed and Starved. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Collapse

Jean-Martin Bauer Author Of The New Breadline: Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century

From my list on fixing our broken global food system.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teenager, I visited my uncle, who farmed rice in southern Haiti. I met a community that helped me understand that food is not just about dollars and cents—it’s about belonging, it’s about identity. This experience inspired me to become an aid worker. For the last 20+ years, I have worked to mend broken food systems all over the world. If we don’t get food right, hunger will threaten the social fabric.

Jean-Martin's book list on fixing our broken global food system

Jean-Martin Bauer Why did Jean-Martin love this book?

I found this book to be well-written and well-documented. While it does not focus solely on food systems, it does explain how a lack of food contributed to the demise of the societies explored in this book, such as the Greenland Norse and Easter Island. Diamond offers a stark warning about how a weak food system can undermine an entire civilization.

By Jared Diamond,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Collapse as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations.

Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future.

What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island?
What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids?
Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the…


Book cover of Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

Jean-Martin Bauer Author Of The New Breadline: Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century

From my list on fixing our broken global food system.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teenager, I visited my uncle, who farmed rice in southern Haiti. I met a community that helped me understand that food is not just about dollars and cents—it’s about belonging, it’s about identity. This experience inspired me to become an aid worker. For the last 20+ years, I have worked to mend broken food systems all over the world. If we don’t get food right, hunger will threaten the social fabric.

Jean-Martin's book list on fixing our broken global food system

Jean-Martin Bauer Why did Jean-Martin love this book?

I found Mike Davis’s book to be an essential exploration of the historical causes of global hunger. As an aid worker, I found his analysis of the politics of 19th-century hunger relief informative. Food crises often have strong political roots, and this book does an excellent job of putting those into perspective.

It is very well-researched and packed with facts and figures. This book is an essential, magisterial read in a world facing renewed conflict and climate change. 

By Mike Davis,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Late Victorian Holocausts as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Examining a series of El Nino-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history. Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China; and Northeastern Brazil. All were affected by the same global climatic factors that caused massive crop failures, and all experienced brutal famines that decimated local populations. But the effects of drought were magnified in each case…


Book cover of The One-Straw Revolution

Jean-Martin Bauer Author Of The New Breadline: Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century

From my list on fixing our broken global food system.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teenager, I visited my uncle, who farmed rice in southern Haiti. I met a community that helped me understand that food is not just about dollars and cents—it’s about belonging, it’s about identity. This experience inspired me to become an aid worker. For the last 20+ years, I have worked to mend broken food systems all over the world. If we don’t get food right, hunger will threaten the social fabric.

Jean-Martin's book list on fixing our broken global food system

Jean-Martin Bauer Why did Jean-Martin love this book?

I appreciated the author’s voice as a farmer speaking from experience and from the heart. Writing from his tiny farm, Fukuoka pushes back with flair against emerging agro-food paradigms.

I also found this book to be a window into mid-20th century Japan, a culture and period I simply did not know much about. Perhaps the best part of the book is the author's withering rants against industrial, modern agriculture. 

By Masanobu Fukuoka,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The One-Straw Revolution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Call it “Zen and the Art of Farming” or a “Little Green Book,” Masanobu Fukuoka’s manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. As Wendell Berry writes in his preface, the book “is valuable to us because it is at once practical and philosophical. It is an inspiring, necessary book about agriculture…


Book cover of Masters of the Dew

Jean-Martin Bauer Author Of The New Breadline: Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century

From my list on fixing our broken global food system.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teenager, I visited my uncle, who farmed rice in southern Haiti. I met a community that helped me understand that food is not just about dollars and cents—it’s about belonging, it’s about identity. This experience inspired me to become an aid worker. For the last 20+ years, I have worked to mend broken food systems all over the world. If we don’t get food right, hunger will threaten the social fabric.

Jean-Martin's book list on fixing our broken global food system

Jean-Martin Bauer Why did Jean-Martin love this book?

I read this novel in a single day when I was in high school. It is about a struggling farming community in Haiti that comes together against all odds to build a better future. This book is lively and told with compassion.

I found Roumain’s exploration of the Haitian psyche in this book revealing; it taught me much about rural Haitian culture. Reading this book at a young age put me on the path to becoming an aid worker focusing on food security. In fact, I dedicated my first book to the Masters of the Dew

By Jacques Roumain,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Masters of the Dew as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A new English-language edition of this novel, which tells of the traditional rural life and people of Haiti, dominated by the natural world. This is a deeply powerful story of the harsh existence of peasant farmers struggling in a world both beautiful and unforgiving. The tale begins with the return of Manuel, a prodigal son, to his aging parents homestead and the realities of subsistence agriculture in a drought-stricken region. He brings new ideas, with the potential to transform the lives of people in the community. He encounters old feuds and resistance to change but he persists, and his determination…


Book cover of The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming

Benjamin Selwyn Author Of The Struggle for Development

From my list on the world on international development.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a political economist interested in development which I’ve been studying, researching, and writing about since my undergraduate days in the early 1990s.

Benjamin's book list on the world on international development

Benjamin Selwyn Why did Benjamin love this book?

This short (190-page) book shows how the global food system is intrinsically connected to world region’s diverse developmental trajectories, covering the colonial era to the green revolution to the contemporary corporate-dominated food system.

Historically, agriculture has been subordinated ever more tightly to capitalist imperatives of profit – based upon increased, faster, and cheaper production. Agriculture has been transformed from a ‘closed loop system’, where soil fertility was renewed based upon locally-available resources (such as animal manure), to a through-flow system dependent upon external inputs.

This shift raised yields for a while, but at the cost of soil exhaustion and the accumulation of power and resources in the hands of agrochemical companies at the expense of the small farmer sector.

Weis suggests that we need to consider new ways of producing our food, which would also establish new forms of world development. 

By Tony Weis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Global Food Economy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Global Food Economy examines the human and ecological cost of what we eat.

The current food economy is characterized by immense contradictions. Surplus 'food mountains', bountiful supermarkets, and rising levels of obesity stand in stark contrast to widespread hunger and malnutrition. Transnational companies dominate the market in food and benefit from subsidies, whilst farmers in developing countries remain impoverished. Food miles, mounting toxicity and the 'ecological hoofprint' of livestock mean that the global food economy rests on increasingly shaky environmental foundations.

This book looks at how such a system came about, and how it is being enforced by the…


Book cover of The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

Dale Hanson Bourke Author Of Strong Girls, Strong World: A Practical Guide to Helping Them Soar--and Creating a Better Future for Us All

From my list on helping you make the world a better place.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I lost a baby late in my pregnancy, I was overwhelmed by grief. And then I learned that tens of thousands of babies died every day from preventable causes. I couldn’t save my own baby, but I wanted to know how to help others. I joined the board of World Vision and then other groups, including Opportunity International, MAP International, and International Justice Mission. I took numerous trips to developing countries and eventually headed a foundation dedicated to maternal health. I listened to the stories of women and tried to tell them to the world through a variety of international publications. I'm forever grateful to those who changed the way I see the world.

Dale's book list on helping you make the world a better place

Dale Hanson Bourke Why did Dale love this book?

Jacqueline Novogratz was a successful young woman with a promising career in banking who wanted to truly understand global poverty and find ways to tackle it.

This book tells not only the remarkable story of a favorite hand-knit blue sweater she donated in Virginia and saw again in Rwanda, but her own sometimes fumbling ways to connect her experiences to women living in poverty.

I love this book for its honesty and how the author shares her own mistakes as well as understandings.

By Jacqueline Novogratz,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Blue Sweater as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A book of hope written by a practical idealist who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer when it comes to building a better world.”—Former U.S. senator Bill Bradley
 
Jacqueline Novogratz left a career in international banking to spend her life on a quest to understand global poverty and find powerful new ways of tackling it. From her first stumbling efforts as a young idealist venturing forth in Africa to the creation of the trailblazing organization she runs today, Novogratz tells gripping stories with unforgettable characters. She shows how traditional charity often fails, but how a…


Book cover of Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty

Ranjit Lall Author Of Making International Institutions Work: The Politics of Performance

From my list on international political economy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an academic at the University of Oxford who specializes in international political economy, so I study this topic for a living! I am particularly interested in the politics of international cooperation and economic development. Growing up, I traveled extensively in developing countries across Asia and Africa, which inspired in me a deep curiosity about the determinants of sustained economic growth. I also spent much time in Geneva, where my father frequently worked with United Nations agencies. His anecdotes about these institutions each evening made me wonder what caused some of them to perform effectively and others to perform poorly—and how they could be improved. 

Ranjit's book list on international political economy

Ranjit Lall Why did Ranjit love this book?

I have long believed that development economists rely too heavily on reductive formal models that ignore on-the-ground realities and are backed by scant empirical evidence. This book makes a compelling case for observation—particularly in the form of randomized controlled trials that approximate scientific experiments “in the field.”

I admire its rigorous use of the scientific method to critique theoretical approaches that draw much of their legitimacy and influence from technical sophistication and abstraction.

By Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Poor Economics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Why do the poor borrow to save? Why do they miss out on free life-saving immunizations, but pay for unnecessary drugs? In Poor Economics , Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two practical visionaries working toward ending world poverty, answer these questions from the ground. In a book the Wall Street Journal called marvellous, rewarding," the authors tell how the stress of living on less than 99 cents per day encourages the poor to make questionable decisions that feed,not fight,poverty. The result is a radical rethinking of the economics of poverty that offers a ringside view of the lives of…


Book cover of Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

Bann Seng Tan Author Of International Aid and Democracy Promotion: Liberalization at the Margins

From my list on using foreign aid to do good in a realistic way.

Why am I passionate about this?

Bann Seng Tan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Ashoka University. His research interests are on the causes and effects of democratization, the politics of foreign aid, the political economy of natural disasters, aid in decentralization, resurgent authoritarianism, and the democratic peace. His policy proclivities revolve around the defence of the liberal world order. Democracy promotion is but one way to push against authoritarianism. 

Bann's book list on using foreign aid to do good in a realistic way

Bann Seng Tan Why did Bann love this book?

Development aid is a type of foreign aid that is directed at the economic development of recipient countries. The failures of government-to-government development aid in Africa are Moyo’s focus. She notes that Africa is the only region that is regressing in major socio-economic indicators. She argues such aid distorts African economies, enables corruption, and incubates a culture of aid dependency. African governments can afford not to provide public goods because their revenue is guaranteed by development aid. To remedy such externalities, Moyo wants to end development aid to Africa. Instead of aid, she prefers free trade with the West and foreign investment from China. This book is remarkable for its willingness to challenge the conventions in development aid. Sometimes, we need to call a spade a spade. 

By Dambisa Moyo,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dead Aid as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much worse.

In Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa today and unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth. In…


Book cover of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry

Donald D. Stull Author Of Any Way You Cut it: Meat Processing and Small-town America

From my list on what’s wrong with what’s for dinner.

Why am I passionate about this?

In the late 1980s, I led a team of researchers who studied relations between Vietnamese refugees, Hispanic immigrants, and native-born residents of Garden City, Kansas, many of whom came to work in what was then the world’s largest beef packing plant. I became fascinated by the meat and poultry industry. Since then, I have studied industry impacts on communities, plant workers, farmers and ranchers in Nebraska, Oklahoma, and my hometown in Kentucky. The meat and poultry industry is highly concentrated, heavily industrialized, and heavily reliant on immigrant labor. As such, it has much to teach us about where our food comes from and how it is made.  

Donald's book list on what’s wrong with what’s for dinner

Donald D. Stull Why did Donald love this book?

Giant corporations control every sector of our economy. Nowhere is this more evident than in what we eat and drink. Controlling these corporations are families about which we know very little. This book pulls back the curtain to reveal the families that created these food empires.

I knew how Cargill captured the grain market, and Walmart muscled its way to the top of the grocers’ mountain. But I had no idea that an obscure German holding company came to dominate what I thought were independent coffee and bakery chains or how the company whose name is on the out-of-season berries in the produce aisle doesn’t really grow them at all. If you are a foodie, Barons will open your eyes and probably turn your stomach. It sure did mine. 

By Austin Frerick,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Barons as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Barons is the story of seven corporate titans, their rise to power, and the consequences for everyone else. Take Mike
McCloskey, Chairman of Fair Oaks Farms. In a few short decades, he went from managing a modest dairy herd to
running the Disneyland of agriculture, where school children ride trams through mechanized warehouses filled with tens
of thousands of cows that never see the light of day. What was the key to his success? Hard work and exceptional
business savvy? Maybe. But more than anything else, Mike benefitted from deregulation of the American food industry, a
phenomenon that has consolidated…


Book cover of Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America

Donald D. Stull Author Of Any Way You Cut it: Meat Processing and Small-town America

From my list on what’s wrong with what’s for dinner.

Why am I passionate about this?

In the late 1980s, I led a team of researchers who studied relations between Vietnamese refugees, Hispanic immigrants, and native-born residents of Garden City, Kansas, many of whom came to work in what was then the world’s largest beef packing plant. I became fascinated by the meat and poultry industry. Since then, I have studied industry impacts on communities, plant workers, farmers and ranchers in Nebraska, Oklahoma, and my hometown in Kentucky. The meat and poultry industry is highly concentrated, heavily industrialized, and heavily reliant on immigrant labor. As such, it has much to teach us about where our food comes from and how it is made.  

Donald's book list on what’s wrong with what’s for dinner

Donald D. Stull Why did Donald love this book?

I like this one because it reveals what is wrong with modern meat production, not only within the broad context of industrial agriculture but also the governmental policies and corporate control of what we eat.

It ranges widely from corporate control of plant and animal genetics to who raises what we eat and dictates where and how it is grown, to the chemicals that go onto our fruits and vegetables and into our bodies, to government oversight and regulation of food safety and animal welfare; to corporate concentration at every link in the food chain.

But what I appreciate most of all is Hauter’s extensive and thoughtful analysis of what can be done to break up the foodopolies and rebuild a healthy and just food system.

By Wenonah Hauter,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Foodopoly as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Wenonah Hauter runs an organic family farm in Northern Virginia that provides healthy vegetables to over five hundred families. Despite this, as one of the nation's leading healthy food advocates, Hauter believes that the local food movement is not enough to solve America's food crisis and the public health debacle it has created. In Foodopoly, she takes aim at the real culprit: the massive consolidation and corporate control of food production, which prevents farmers from raising healthy crops and limits the choices that people can make in the grocery store.


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in poverty, agriculture, and food industry?

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