The New York Times best-selling author of Fat Chance explains the eight pathologies that underlie all chronic disease, documents how processed food has impacted them to ruin our health, economy, and environment over the past 50 years, and proposes an urgent manifesto and strategy to cure both us and the planet.

Everyone knows how hard it can be to maintain a healthy diet. But what if some of the decisions we make about what to eat are beyond our control? Is it possible that food is addictive, like drugs or alcohol? And to what extent does the food industry know, or care, about these vulnerabilities? In Hooked, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss sets out to answer these questions - and to find the true peril in our food.

How does soap know what's dirt? How do magnets work? Why do ice cubes crackle in your glass? And how can you keep them quiet? These are questions that torment us all. Now Robert L. Wolke, professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, provides definitive - and amazingly simple - explanations for the mysteries of everyday life.

In Cooked, Pollan discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements - fire, water, air, and earth - to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. Apprenticing himself to a succession of culinary masters, Pollan learns how to grill with fire, cook with liquid, bake bread, and ferment everything from cheese to beer. Each section of Cooked tracks Pollan’s effort to master a single classic recipe using one of the four elements.

Every great drink starts with a plant. Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley. Gin was born from a conifer shrub when medieval physicians boiled juniper berries with wine to treat stomach pain. The Drunken Botanist uncovers the surprising botanical history and fascinating science and chemistry of over 150 plants, flowers, trees, and fruits (and even a few fungi).

Since prehistory, humans have braved the business ends of knives, scrapers, and mashers, all in the name of creating something delicious - or at least edible. In Consider the Fork, award-winning food writer and historian Bee Wilson traces the ancient lineage of our modern culinary tools, revealing the startling history of objects we often take for granted. Charting the evolution of technologies from the knife and fork to the gas range and the sous-vide cooker, Wilson offers unprecedented insights.

“What’s for dinner"? seemed like a simple question - until journalist and supermarket detective Michael Pollan delved behind the scenes. From fast food and big organic to small farms and old-fashioned hunting and gathering, this young listeners’ adaptation of Pollan’s famous food-chain exploration encourages kids to consider the personal and global health implications of their food choices. The Omnivore’s Dilemma serves up a bold message to the generation that needs it most: It’s time to take charge of our national eating habits - and it starts with you.

While everything around us is in disarray and filled with confusion, you can take control of this area of your life and know that your family will have plenty of food, no matter what your circumstances. More importantly, if you’re consistent, you can accomplish this in 15 minutes a day or less! Strapped for cash? Provide your family with a year’s worth of food for $160 per person per year! I’ll show you how.

Best-selling author Jeff Alworth takes serious beer aficionados on a behind-the-scenes tour of 26 major European and North American breweries that create some of the world's most classic beers. Learn how the Irish make stout, the secrets of traditional Czech pilsner, and what makes English cask ale unique by delving deep into the specific techniques, equipment, and geographical factors that shape these distinctive styles.

Go Gently is a guide for sustainability at home that offers simple, tangible steps toward reducing our environmental impact by looking at what we consume and the waste we create, as well as how to take action for environmental change. The title reflects Bonnie Wright’s belief that the best way to change our planet and ourselves is through a gentle approach, rather than a judgmental one. This is a book of do’s rather than don’ts. It’s also an invitation to Wright’s followers to join her on this journey to sustainability.

What would you do if a time machine hurled you thousands of years into the past...and then broke? How would you survive? With this book as your guide, you'll survive - and thrive - in any period in Earth's history. Best-selling author and time-travel enthusiast Ryan North tells you how to invent all the modern conveniences we take for granted - from first principles. This manual contains all the science, engineering, art, philosophy, facts, and figures required for even the most clueless time traveler to build a civilization from the ground up.

For millennia, fresh olive oil has been a necessity - for food, medicine, beauty, and religion. Today's researchers continue to confirm the remarkable, life-giving properties of true extra-virgin, and "extra-virgin Italian" has become the highest standard of quality. But what if this symbol of purity has become deeply corrupt?

Fatal conveniences are the toxic products we routinely use and the unhealthy things we do that our culture and corporations have made us believe are safe and necessary for living well and efficiently. These things—from deodorant, cosmetics, dental floss, and sunscreen to laundry detergent, air fresheners, carpets, and crayons to candles, tea bags, cell phones, and chewing gum—are ubiquitous in daily life . . . and they are wreaking havoc on our health and our planet.

To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. Fast Food Nation is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats.

The Home Distiller’s Workbook tackles the often misunderstood and misrepresented world of moonshine and distillation and reduces them to such simple concepts that even a first time "Shiner" can understand. The HDW will introduce you to the three basic steps in making your own artisan-crafted spirits: brewing, distilling, and ageing. We will be tackling these steps one by one in a way that will have you saying "I just can’t believe it was that easy." And the truth is that it’s even easier then that. If you can follow a recipe to make a cake then with the help of the HDW you could be making anything from Moonshine to Vodka.

In an engaging tour of the science and history of cheese, Michael Tunick explores the art of cheese making, the science that lies underneath the deliciousness, and the history behind how humanity came up with one of its most varied and versatile of foods. Dr. Tunick spends his everyday deep within the halls of the science of cheese, as a researcher who creates new dairy products, primarily, cheeses.

If a piece of individually wrapped cheese retains its shape, color, and texture for years, what does it say about the food we eat and feed our children? Former New York Times reporter and mother Melanie Warner decided to explore that question when she observed the phenomenon of the indestructible cheese. She began an investigative journey that takes her to research labs, food science departments, and factories around the country. What she discovered provides a rare, eye-opening - and sometimes disturbing - account of what we're really eating.

In January of 2012, Megan Kimble was a 26-year-old living in a small apartment without even a garden plot to her name. But she cared about where food came from, how it was made, and what it did to her body: so she decided to go an entire year without eating processed foods. Unprocessed is the narrative of Megan's extraordinary year, in which she milled wheat, extracted salt from the sea, milked a goat, slaughtered a sheep, and more - all while earning an income that fell well below the federal poverty line.

Mark Kurlansky's first global food history since the best-selling Cod and Salt; the fascinating cultural, economic and culinary story of milk and all things dairy - with recipes throughout. According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a splatter of the goddess Hera's breast milk became our galaxy, the Milky Way.

In Slime we'll meet the algae innovators working toward a sustainable future: from seaweed farmers in South Korea, to scientists using it to clean the dead zones in our waterways, to the entrepreneurs fighting to bring algae fuel and plastics to market. Ruth Kassinger takes listeners on an around-the-world, behind-the-scenes, and into-the-kitchen tour. Whether you thought algae was just the gunk in your fish tank or you eat seaweed with your oatmeal, Slime will delight and amaze with its stories of the good, the bad, and the up-and-coming.

Straightforward and opinionated, Short Course in Beer is designed to turn the novice beer lover into an expert imbiber and the casual drinker into an enthusiast. Readers will come to understand the beauty of beer and the sources of its flavor, as well as learn which beers are worth our time and which are not. With tongue in cheek, the author examines beer's historical connections to the Crusades, the Hundred Years' War, and modern-day soccer riots. He talks frankly (and joyfully) about the effects of alcohol on the body and brain, he defends beer from its enemies, and ushers it out of the frat house and into the dining room.

Since prehistory, humans have braved the business ends of knives, scrapers, and mashers, all in the name of creating something delicious - or at least edible. In Consider the Fork, award-winning food writer and historian Bee Wilson traces the ancient lineage of our modern culinary tools, revealing the startling history of objects we often take for granted. Charting the evolution of technologies from the knife and fork to the gas range and the sous-vide cooker, Wilson offers unprecedented insights.

The Brewer's Tale is a beer-filled journey into the past: the story of brewers gone by and one brave writer's quest to bring them - and their ancient, forgotten beers - back to life, one taste at a time. This is the story of the world according to beer, a toast to flavors born of necessity and place - in Belgian monasteries, rundown farmhouses, and the basement nanobrewery next door. So pull up a barstool and raise a glass to 5,000 years of fermented magic.

Beer offers an amusing and informative account of the art and science of brewing, examining the history of brewing, and how the brewing process has evolved through the ages. The third edition features more information concerning the history of beer, especially in the United States; British, Japanese, and Egyptian beer; beer in the context of health and nutrition; and the various styles of beer. Author Charles Bamforth has also added detailed information on prohibition, Sierra Nevada, and life as a maltster.

Every great drink starts with a plant. Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley. Gin was born from a conifer shrub when medieval physicians boiled juniper berries with wine to treat stomach pain. The Drunken Botanist uncovers the surprising botanical history and fascinating science and chemistry of over 150 plants, flowers, trees, and fruits (and even a few fungi).

The United States boasts a culturally and ethnically diverse population which makes for a continually changing culinary landscape. But a young historical gastronomist named Sarah Lohman discovered that American food is united by eight flavors: black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. In Eight Flavors, Lohman sets out to explore how these influential ingredients made their way to the American table.

In Proof, Adam Rogers reveals alcohol as a miracle of science, going deep into the pleasures of making and drinking booze—and the effects of the latter. The people who make and sell alcohol may talk about history and tradition, but alcohol production is really powered by physics, molecular biology, organic chemistry, and a bit of metallurgy—and our taste for those products is a melding of psychology and neurobiology.

Regarded as one of the brightest young scientists of his generation, Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world as well as a thought experiment about the very idea of scientific knowledge itself.

Like many people, Beth Terry didn't think an individual could have much impact on the environment. But while laid up after surgery, she read an article about the staggering amount of plastic polluting the oceans and decided then and there to kick her plastic habit. Now she wants to teach you how you can too.

In Mycophilia, accomplished food writer and cookbook author Eugenia Bone examines the role of fungi as exotic delicacy, curative, poison, and hallucinogen, and ultimately discovers that a greater understanding of fungi is key to facing many challenges of the 21st century.