Book Club: Nabhan

Food from the Radical Center: Healing our Land and Communities
By Gary Paul Nabhan

Quote: To capsulize a complex story in very few words, America is not divided about whether the environment deserves restoration. They are not divided about whether our communities require social healing. What divides us is who gets to decide how this work is done, who does it, and how much it should cost (17).

It’s election week. We might all be looking for some comfort food. So I thought I’d pick a book recommendation that could relate. 

Released in 2018, Nabhan shares stories of cooperation across a divided political spectrum. He has fifty years of work with community-based projects around the nation, from the desert Southwest to the low country of the Southeast.

Chapter by chapter, you will be introduced to new layers of resilience. The author says himself, “The restoration of land and rare species has provided—dollar for dollar—one of the best returns on investment of any conservation initiative.” Food is one of the more complex pieces of a sustainability puzzle, and this book honors the diversity of experience and methodology at hand.