Diet for a Small Planet.

Twenty years and three million copies later, the extraordinary book that taught America the social and personal significance of a new way of eating is still a complete guide for eating well in the '90s. Sharing her personal evolution and how this groundbreaking book changed her own life, world-renowned food expert Frances Moore Lappé offers an even more fascinating philosophy for changing yourself —and the world— by changing the way you eat.

I first heard of this book while reading an article on the Spanish press about the recently deceased Steve Jobs, who apparently became a vegetarian after reading this book back in the early 1970s. It drew my attention not because Steve Jobs read it, but rather due to its topic, as well as the fact that a good friend recognized it when I mentioned it to him.

Technical description:
Title: Diet for a Small Planet.
Author: Frances Moore Lappé.
Publisher: Ballantine Books.
Edition: Twentieth Anniversary Edition, New York (USA), September 1991 (1971)
Pages: 479 pages, including bibliography, index and recipes.
ISBN: 0-345-37366-9

Driven to Extinction. The Impact of Climate Change on Biodiversity.

Climate change is real, and so is the threat it poses to the diversity of plants and animals that inhabit Earth. Yet debate on this topic has been polarized by catastrophists who fret that we are heading toward total disaster and skeptics who insist that there is nothing to worry about. In Driven to Extinction, Richard Pearson, a scientist at the American Museum of Natural History, explains the science behind the debate in an unbiased and level-headed manner.

Pearson shows that the threat to biodiversity by climate change increases the risk of extinction, especially when combined with other threats, such as habitat destruction and the influx of non-native species. But he is no alarmist. On the contrary, he warns against predictions of doom, highlighting the often unexpected ways in which nature can adapt to environmental change. Even so, Pearson does not gloss over the seriousness of the issue. Focusing on case studies from around the world, he describes not only what we know, but how we know it —the data, methods, and reasoning behind of what science does and does not know, and contributes a unique perspective to the debate that really matters: now who is to blame, but what is to be done.

Technical description:
Title: Driven to Extinction. The impact of Climate Change on Biodiversity.
Author: Richard Pearson.
Publisher: Sterling/American Museum of Natural History.
Edition: first edition, New York (USA), 2011 (2011).
Pages: 263 pages, including index.
ISBN: 978-1-4027-7223-8