Best Books For Vegetarian Cooking & Lifestyle

"Gaia's Garden", by Toby Hemenway. This is my favorite gardening book. It's a complete, user friendly guide to backyard permaculture - organic, sustainable, ecologically sound agriculture scaled to the small holding.

"The Vegetarian Solution", by Stewart Rose. This book explains why a vegetarian diet is best for our health, the environment, global warming, animal welfare, and our souls. It is a friendly, compassionate, upbeat, quietly persuasive book about the many reasons for going vegetarian.

"In Defense of Food", by Michael Pollan. Pollan provides another shocking yet essential treatise on the industrialized Western diet and its detrimental effects on our bodies and culture. Here he lays siege to the food industry and scientists' attempts to reduce food and the cultural practices of eating into bite-size concepts known as nutrients, and contemplates the follies of doing so.

"Gardening When It Counts", by Steve Solomon. THe author helps readers rediscover traditional low-input gardening methods to produce healthy food. Designed for readers with no experience and applicable to most areas in the English-speaking world,this book shows that any family with access to 3-5,000 sq. ft. of garden land can halve their food costs using a growing system requiring just the odd bucketful of household waste water, perhaps two hundred dollars worth of hand tools.

"Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming", James Hoggan w/ Richard Littlemore. Canadian environmental activists Hoggan and Littlemore pull no punches in this spirited indictment of global warming deniers. Their well-sourced research spotlights premeditated prevarications about the threat of greenhouse gas emissions by the oil and coal industry, in league with junk scientists, compliant conservative politicians and unsavory public relations practitioners.

"An Inconvenient Truth", by Al Gore. With this book, Gore, who is one of our environmental heroes�and a leading expert�brings together leading-edge research from top scientists around the world; photographs, charts, and other illustrations; and personal anecdotes and observations to document the fast pace and wide scope of global warming.

"Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis ", by Al Gore. No one is more qualified than Gore to lead the collective movement beyond fossil fuels, given his command of the science and politics involved, his invaluable global connections and resources, and his sensitivity to our reluctance to face the �magnitude and gravity of the climate crisis.�

"Superbia! 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods", by Dan Chiras and Dave Wann. Superbia! is a book of practical ideas for creating more socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable neighborhoods. It is about remaking suburban and urban neighborhoods to serve people better and to reduce human impact on the environment.

"Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet", by Edward Humes. Mr. Humes shares the inspiring stories of devoted men and women committed to being the protectors of the planet, thereby ensuring a better future for all the earth's inhabitants. These little-known white knights have dedicated their entire lives and fortunes to this cause. They all valiantly fought against insurmountable obstacles and overwhelming opposition.

"Appetite for Profit", by Michele Simon. Simon, a health policy expert and law professor, explains the ABCs of the business imperative of "Big Food" (Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods and McDonald's, among many others): make short-term profit without regard to the product's nutritional value or societal effects.

"Diet for a Hot Planet" by Anna Lapp�. Lapp�, daughter of green food writer Frances Moore Lapp�, evokes her mother's 1971 classic, Diet for a Small Planet, to critique industrial farming and its carbon costs and give her own updated, upbeat prescription for a climate-friendly food system.