So, after all dystopia novels and pandemic literature, what are you reading this year? My list reflects what worries me (and probably most people) most in 2020: health, food and travel. While I’m not aiming for a theme, these books make it onto my table because in some way, they all cover this year’s topic of conversation.

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One book that captured so many photos this year is “Kingdom of Vegetables, ”A collection of recipes inspired globally by chef / activist Bryant Terry. This is a great book to consider in a year when citizens line up for social justice, an unprecedented number of people lining up for food aid while the food industry is experiencing a collapse throughout its supply and distribution chain. Food activism The industry, of course, is nothing new, and has many vocal cooks like Dan Barber and José Andrés. My feeling is that Terry is more of a quiet scream – just as passionate but looking for another way to get in – food and social justice through the Black culinary tradition that elevates and removes cliches (the fennel “Blackify” way is his cookbook opener and the subject of a The New Yorker Podcast).

Terry is a chef-in-residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, with programming based on the intersection of food, agriculture, health, activism, art, culture, and the African Diaspora, and much of this is reflected in this Book. And while it sounds like platform heavy, the recipes are discreet, approachable, and don’t require access to a grocery store (there’s a helpful list of cupboard requirements). I love how the book is organized around topics such as roots, stems, tubers and tubers, giving me quick scans for meal planning, but it also puts plant-based foods at the center of things, not after-thoughts on the table. The book is also fun to hold: neither the weight nor the size is cumbersome, with stunning photography on quality matte paper [10 Speed Press].

With a new source of food in my mind, I reread some of Michael Pollan’s books, but a new book caught my eye, The Secret Life of Foodstuffs by Benjamin Lorr, an investigative writer who previously reported on the yoga industry. I’ve been thinking about the bottom half of the industry since reading New York magazine stories a decade ago food source ethicsUnfortunately, it comes to the idea that even when I thought I was doing good, I might not. But seeing grocery store employees become our new essential workers during the relentless pandemic, I am rethinking not only what I buy for my personal consumption, but how my purchases contribute to safety, comfort and well-being at work. If nothing else makes you consider the same, read Lorr’s opening description of cleaning fish counters at Whole Foods. It is reminiscent of Sinclair Upton ‘1906 Forest, a semi-reportage novel that details the unethical treatment of meat packers, and shows that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Lorr empathizes with workers who are engine idle gears (he accompanies or works with them to gain insights into boot-on-the-ground), questions how consumers use food as a vehicle for ethical responsibility and advises we are all really pawns at great food game. It is not titled, “America’s Supermarket Dark Wonder” for free. In the end, you’ll think twice about reaching for a box of cheap oatmeal at Trader Joe’s: somewhere, someone is paying a higher price to get you that privilege. [Avery, Penguin Random House].

This year is one in which, if you live in a food-centric urban area, the pleasure of eating is replaced by concern for the many restaurants devastated by the pandemic. For this reason, the 2020 anthology Best American Food Writing, is a historical document, describing a food culture that is likely to change forever. Editor J. Kenji López-Alt references the pandemic up front (the book was published in November), but all the stories in this volume were first published in 2019 and were selected in February, just before the coronavirus stopped the world. Both travel books and cultural guides, this year’s edition carefully touches on some of the issues that will be this year’s theme: how to save local foodstuffs, hardships behind the scenes of restaurant kitchens, white supremacy in Yelp’s review. In a new world where we are more and more asked about the authenticity of food, our involvement in it and our true needs, some stories seem like light meals. But López-Alt, chef and author of the James Beard Award-nominated column “The Food Lab,” is noteworthy enough that stories like this one have important connections to history, culture and one another. [Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt].

Anyone who has ever traveled the ancient route, or dreamed of doing so, will find deep satisfaction Cumin, Camel, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey by Gary Paul Nabhan. Published in 2014, it’s a fun book, albeit academically tolerable, in a year without travel, and as I look to the past to escape the present. A prolific food activist writer, Nabhan has a long list of credentials that summarizes everything we should look out for: he, a PhD agricultural ecologist, ethnobotanist, an ecumenical Franciscan brother, and a pioneer in the heritage seed preservation movement (and he’s a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant” “, So there you go). The author’s wanderings meander along four historic trade routes: silk, frankincense, spices, and the Camino Real, the latter of which was established between the Spanish and US missions for items such as chilies and chocolate. Its “journey” describes the origins of the spices, where and how they were traded and culturally adapted (the insert in turmeric will resonate with most eaters / cooks), which is further summarized in the last chapter on cultural imperialism, reminds us of that we are all involved in our food choices [University of California Press].

My year-end guilty pleasure is the new James Beard biography, Men Who Eat Too Much by John Birdsall, former chef and himself the James Beard Award-winning author. The first such book in decades describes Beard’s upbringing as a child and his migration from his childhood home in Oregon to New York City, through European capitals and a canceled theater career. All the details about birds are, for the first time, snippets from the childhood of Beard – a boy who knew from the age of 7 he preferred the same sex, and whose appetite was spoiled from an early age, undoubtedly contributed to his ” plump and pale as meringue boiled milk. This is an unusual glimpse, as not many of Beard’s personal files have survived. But Birdsall created a substantial narrative from what is known: Beard’s expulsion from college for a sexual act with a professor, an overseas trip that would inform his food perspective, and finally his migration to New York City, where he founded a dinner club, a career and new American cuisine. Her biographer penetrates the dichotomy between the chef’s inner and outer self – an oversized personality (6’3 ”and 300 pounds) and a Falstaffian personality who hides calculations that contradict his sexuality, and struggles with appearance, finances, loneliness, and depression. It’s no surprise to know that Beard substitutes food for unresolved emotional problems, but even so, it touches home and reminds us how longing for food is primary, hurts and, in the end, can be empty. [W.W. Norton].