Lierre KeithRezensionen

Cité par Nicolas Casaux

Book is tainted with neo-feminist Marxist dribble with a lot of environmental hand wringing thrown in for good measure. At least Keith recognizes that vegetarianism isn't going to save the world but what she doesn't recognize is that the world doesn't need saved. Only someone who has arrogated their ego to the Savior Complex would believe that. Also, ever notice how people with dogmatic opinions about how food should be produced live in big cities and know little about agronomy? Keith is no exception.

This is an intensely frustrating book. I just concluded my 2nd attempt to get through it.

Let me say that I am passionately in agreement with the authors' contentions. I just think this book shoots itself in the foot.

The first time I tried reading it, I put it down because I was starting to feel hectored/harangued. The general tenor of my reaction was "look, I agree with you, I'm a member of the choir, why are you shouting at me?" And so based on that experience, my capsule review would have said the main problem with the book was one of tone.

But it has worse problems. I got through more of the book this time, but reached a point where I was thinking "okay -- there've been 150+ pages about why this or that approach is misguided or is not enough. I'm gonna make it to the next section and hope against hope there is some sort of specific instruction regarding what DOES work." And then I got to the next chapter, "Other Plans" ("'other' plans?" I thought -- "you haven't presented ANY plans yet"), and on page 195 author Keith started in on another list of three approaches that don't work. I put the book down.

The writing here is passionate and, in a surface sense, "good." There is not much wrong with it qua writing -- and I certainly nodded along vigorously, although I think I was told six times that 200 species died today (PLEASE don't take this as my saying that that fact is not catastrophic -- it is). But FFS, DGR friends, you can't just tell me that "we have to stop using fossil fuels NOW" without providing concrete HOWTOs for the kind of resistance you're envisioning. Yes, okay, "classical liberalism" is too personality-based ... but you keep telling us what DOESN'T work and haven't told us what DOES. Surely in the first 200 pages there should have been some hint. Maybe I missed it.

I hate to single out author Lierre Keith for the blame, here, but the bulk of those 195 pages are hers. It's shitty of me to say, but how many species died while I was trying to get to the part of this book that recommends specific actions?

The author outlines the ridiculousness of the Vegan and Vegetarian mythos and digs into political, social, moral, nutritional, and most importantly, the sustainable aspects of eating... and ultimately our footprint, as a species, on planet Earth.

For this reader there was no huge revelations, since I'm well versed in the realities of agriculture and food at this point, and spend a great deal of time immersed in the natural and agricultural world, but the author nicely packages a fairly comprehensive discussion of the topic into this volume. There is a disturbing element to having all this laid out in one volume though: As you read it, it really underscores the pervasiveness of a community of folks that live their lives entirely divorced from the realities of the natural world and the cycles of life, death, and rebirth. I don't want to sound overly harsh, but it is a bit unavoidable. These are folks that look at nature from inside a bubble... through a pane of glass. Never really understanding it. Some is their fault, but it is a societal disorder, long in coming considering urbanization and how housebound most people in the 1st world are today.

The other disturbing element to the story as outlined by the author, is that though we know what we need to do to address the deeper ecological realities of massive over-population on this planet I personally am not confident that we'll take the necessary steps, and I don't think the author is either.

And that is where the biggest surprise of the book was found. The author was not afraid to summarize the corrective course of action that we would have to take as humans to make things better. Finally someone is bold enough, in a relatively mainstream book, to state that in order to ever have a sustainable, ecological, and ethical food system (or any system)... over-population really needs to be addressed. Severely. It will solve itself eventually, but it can either be messy and violent, or orderly and peaceful. Not many authors writing a mainstream book are bold enough to state it so plainly.

4 stars: There are three issues I had with the book: (1) The author slips into "appeal to emotion" a bit much, (2) It's hard to weed out the good science from the bad or mediocre, and (3) There is no index... which means you have to take notes, write in the margins, and highlight, or just have a really good memory. ;) Geez. Books like this *have* to have an index. I blame her editors. What a disappointment.

Great book. Folks, if you are confused as to why the vegan/vegetarian lifestyle is unsustainable, unnatural, relatively unhealthy, un-ecological, and ultimately more than a bit silly (but with non-silly implications)... this is a great book to to read. Even more importantly, it is a great discussion about environmentalism, food security, and agricultural sustainability, and of course, overpopulation -- topics that I am particularly passionate about, even more so than the main topic of the book.

Recommend.

This is the third Derrick Jensen book I've decided to inflict on myself, but probably not the last. They each start with great promise and by the end descend to infuriating illogical leaps, and this one was no different (it is the promise of each that lures me into trying again). However, the presence of two co-authors aided in readability.

Deep Green Resistance aims to motivate the formation of an underground army to carry out something they call Decisive Ecological Warfare. This is not a joke. Through reading guerrilla and resistance books and manuals from many historical periods, they put together a strategy for identifying the goal (destroy industrial civilization), developing a strategy, and identifying tactics (blowing things up, mostly). They helpfully include suggestions on things like minimizing security leaks and performing background checks on new recruits (again, not a joke). I can't speak to the practicality of any of this, never having run nor even participated in underground armies, but I can say that as I have no immediate nor long-term plans to assassinate anyone, I skipped that section altogether.

However, what the authors overlook in their very thorough review of global resistance movements past and present, is that this is not Nazi Germany, nor is it the Niger delta. That is: the very fact that they were able to write and publish this book through a mainstream publishing house, and that it is sold at large national bookstore chains, would seem to indicate that we live in a society where people have enough personal freedom that the extreme solutions they advocate are possibly not necessary, and almost certainly something most of us are not yet desperate enough to entertain. This is as kindly as I can put it. This would all point towards a 1/5 rating.

Also frustrating: the section on horizontal hostility (aka "infighting," where sub movements critique each other rather than their actual targets), then followed by approximately 100 pages of attacks on other kinds of environmentalists, and why their kind of environmentalism is inadequate. I don't know why this is necessary. Surely, even if you don't think they're using their time well by building wind farms, using cloth shopping bags and making community gardens, this does not make them the enemy and you don't need to call them names.

What bumps it up at a 3/5 is the analysis, which is spot on in many respects, and what they call the "aboveground" movement and tactics. In other words, if you can't go around blowing stuff up because you have other responsibilities, here are some things you can do that might actually help move this culture in a sustainable direction. And that's useful and, as with all of Jensen's books, beautifully written. Their passion for the natural world is unquestionable and their assessment of our straits is bang-on. But taking potshots at other environmentalists is totally unnecessary, their assessments of the other environmentalists' positions is inaccurate and unkind, and the comparison of industrial capitalism with nazi germany/nigeria renders much of their analysis and suggested solutions unuseable. I mean, for crying out loud, here I am, under my own name, writing a review of a book advocating the destruction of infrastructure and the assassination of capitalists, said book bought at Chapters, review published on a public website, and I have every expectation not to be arrested for it. Doesn't that say something?

I'm a vegetarian. I'll get that out of the way. I really liked this book at first, because it was challenging my concept of environmental vegetarianism. Lierre talks about annual mono-crop agriculture, and how it's very very unsustainable. Cool. Did not know that. Because of Lierre, I've learned about perennial polyculture and permaculture farming. Awesome. I don't disagree with Lierre's ideas about how you could feasibly have a permaculture farm with animals, and it be humane to those animals to later on eat them. I'm ok with that.
That being said, the rest of this book is filled with misconceptions, mistakes, half-truths, and straight out bat-shit nonsense...that I found it very difficult to read.
http://vegetarianmythmyth.wordpress.com/
http://vegetarianmythmyth.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/hi/
http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/09/review-of-the-vegetarian-myth.html

Anarcho primitivism. Resistance culture.

What is liberal? What is conservative? What is radical? What is moderate?

These are relative terms. What does that mean? They’re set by the poles. That means that the wild card here are the poles. What’s outside this box can’t be influential.

So what? Well, what’s “possible” influences both our beliefs and our actions, even if we don’t go all the way up to the edge.

For example: If you believe that growing your own garden is radical, you might sign a petition about the Farm Bill. But if you believe that taking down civilization is radical [DGR] - a greatly expanded spectrum from the former - then you might really dig into the Farm Bill, and create a permaculture garden while you’re at it. We could call this pushing the center.

This is the light in which I found Deep Green Resistance useful. I wouldn’t say my aim in life is to consciously bring about the end of civilization [although it’s unconsciously moving that direction], as would many DGR people. I’m more in alignment with the optimistic views presented by Charles Eisenstein. But knowing that there are people out there that use this view as there compass helps to for me to orient myself.

Also, in a culture where we’re surrounded by antiterrorist propaganda, where the incumbent way of thinking is the only way to think [not that this is ever uncommon], DGR is a breath of fresh air. I would highly recommend it to help expand your horizons, even if I don’t endorse the authors’ viewpoints.

This is NOT an anti-vegetarian book.
This is NOT a pro-human carnivore book.
My understanding of the book's message: humans need to relearn how to live local or the consequences are dire. And no, Local doesn't mean driving an hour from home.

Good book, could have used a better editor perhaps..
..though, if you take into consideration what her stated objective was for writing the book in the first place, she doesn't need an editor for her book, we readers do.

I think it could be helpful to, before reading too far into the book, what you the reader are hoping to get out of the experience. People I've encountered don't tend to respond well to having their beliefs (and by extension, identity) "challenged" and this book seems to have something to offend everyone.

If you're a vegan, you'll probably hate the book. You probably won't even finish the book, and if you do finish and you're still vegan then you weren't actually learning.

If you're an omnivore who considers yourself something of an environmentalist, but goes to -insert-grocery-store-chain-name-here- and buys meat products after reading the book, then you weren't actually learning.

If you're vegetarian, the Why of your choice to be vegetarian will probably influence your take on the book content.

If you're anti-1970s style feminist, you'll probably balk at the author more than her book's message.

If you love when authors cite their sources so you the reader can double check the presented info for yourself -regardless of whether you agree with the perspectives or not- you should read this book.

The author brought up some interesting points and I even believe her about the devastation that agriculture has wrought on our ecosystem. But I think she is being too idealistic in thinking we can change the landscape enough to reverse the damage of the last 10 thousand years (at least enough to support a population of 7 billion and growing).

I suppose I have a pessimistic outlook but I would prefer to stay closer to realism than idealism. We need to understand that even if we cleaned up all the messes we've created industrially, agriculturally, etc., there are emerging 3rd world countries with billions of people who are poised to strike the death blow to Earth as we know it. It's bleak but a very real danger.

Understanding that this book was aimed more at vegan and vegetarian democrats than meat-eating libertarians like me, I still enjoyed the very informative presentation. I had no idea that a vegetarian diet was so damaging to our bodies (or to the soil, for that matter). I respect what the author was trying to do and to the extent that we can do it, I'm on board. I will make a greater effort to consume more local food than previously and I'm glad I read this book.

Anything I could say, lemontwist has said better, but in short, this is a great book for angry people who know it all and demand change now. Once you are out of your late teens/ early twenties, however, it starts to just sound like mindless yelling.

I find it hard to write a review that does this book justice. It is potentially very important, but there are some serious flaws too.

This book really makes two points. The first one is that vegetarianism does not really solve anything. It does not stop us from killing other creatures, it does not stop world hunger, and it is not healthy. The second point is that the real problem stays unadressed this way, and the real problem is that agriculture and industrialization, helped by fossil fuels, have allowed us to put more people on this planet than it can handle in the long term. We need to do something about overpopulation, we need to stop using fossil fuel, we need to do it as fast as we can, and thinking we can do something about it by having another soy burger is fooling ourselves.

I think those are important points, and I think they are valid as well. She does seem to have her facts straight - either I already knew them, or they made sense. Sometimes they even made sense of facts that had been puzzling me for a while, such as why people with low cholesterol have a higher chance of dying of violence.

I think she is very brave to write this book as well. These are things that people do not want to hear and that do need to be said.

Now for the flaws. As well-researched as the facts are, the argumentation is not as solid. She first spends some time explaining to us that just because cholesterol is often found in plaques, this doesn't mean that it has caused them, and then she tells us that polyunsaturated fats may be dangerous because they are often found in plaques. On a related plane, she does not always seem to have her action priorities straight. After telling us we really need to do something about overpopulation, she gets all worked up about the possible side effects of soy infant formula.

I also think the tone is very "tree-hugging". I don't mind hugging some trees on occasion, but it gets too much.

I would have liked an index too, it is pretty impossible to find things in this book.

And one last thing that is not a fault of the book, but still might be a reason not to read it. I found this book seriously depressing. It paints a very dark picture of where this world is going, and it does not give much hope that we can change it before it is too late. I do think it's brave that she shows so much problems without a ready-made solution, but uplifting it's not.

Still, altogether, I do recommend this book. If you can stand it.½

Regardless of the content, this book is simply unreadable. Surely it cannot be the book on this subject? One extra star plus a review to make it clear that I didn't give it a low rating just because I am vegan/vegetarian (I eat meat).

First: minus 1 star for an occasionally snarky tone and a poor sense of humor. If you lack the ability to relate to your audience in a basic way, it doesn't matter how good your arguments are.

Now, as for content, Keith basically tears apart the environmental and political arguments for vegetarianism. She concludes with a very convincing chapter on nutrition that has me ready to buy a cow (or any grass-fed animal) and eat it--now.

Keith is arguing against agricultural subsistence based on annual grains and for a polyculture based on animal products and ultimately grass. The former has destroyed human health and ecosystems for 10,000 years; the latter has sustained human life and ecosystems for four million years (her number).

While it doesn't flow as seamlessly or have the flashy presentation of Michael Pollan's work, it is just as thought provoking, and it has what I feel [b:The Omnivore's Dilemma|3109|The Omnivore's Dilemma A Natural History of Four Meals|Michael Pollan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1192945129s/3109.jpg|3287769] lacks: explicit politics. Altogether well done.

Good ideas, but too long. Why not spend a little extra time editing this and have a really solid product?

Was recommended this book by a collegue who swears by LCHF.

I'm a meateater so it didn't really change anything for me, and the book might have some points, but my problem was that most if not all the facts presented were anecdotal or had no source.
Tho that might be a problem with expectation I had of it being a factual book and not more like a biography.

This was one of the more controversial books we carried this year. A quick look at the online reviews will tell you the same thing - people are worked up about this thing. Lierre Keith is a brave, brave woman. I wouldn't want to pick a fight with every vegan in the world at the same time.

What I think has been lost in the furor is that her point - the heart of her point, at any rate - is very simple, and very hard to argue with. We take turns eating and being eaten - we consume today, but will be consumed in our turn. If you stop to think about this simple fact, and how it weaves all of us on earth together into an unending cycle of renewal and need, it can give you shivers. It's holy. And it's an idea that encourages us to be more reverent towards all of our food - not just the food with faces, but all of it, the seeds and fruit and leaves, and even the soil itself, richly and deeply alive.

To be reverent and respectful is to think about where your food comes from. It's not enough to give up animal products and think you're doing the world any favors. Monocrops and industrial agriculture, reliant as they are on huge amounts of water, fossil fuel, and chemicals, are not sustainable. And they're slaughtering animal and insect life all around them, so that even your vegetarian meal carries a heavy toll. And who is growing and processing your food, and how? How much fossil fuel is used to get it to your plate? It's at the very least a gross mistake for vegans to feel that their dietary choices have exempted them from considering these things. At worst it's a self-serving lie.

Honestly, I don't care if people are vegan or not. I have known healthy vegans and seriously emaciated unhealthy vegans, who really just needed to eat a steak or something. Keith's nutritional arguments in favor of meat eating are well constructed and meticulously footnoted, but I think it's a little beside the point. Which is hard to argue with: we are not, as a people, healthy, and we are quickly fucking up the earth.

There are some flaws in the book. People have taken issue with her flowery, personally revealing narrative, but I thought it was lovely and compassionate. She could have drawn from a wider range of books for her research, but that's a minor quibble. A larger point of issue is her attack on agriculture. It seems clear that the advent of large scale single crop agriculture brought with it a decline in ecological and human health. But the hunter gathering model, which she favors, isn't an entirely unagricultural enterprise. Many such societies managed certain resources - plants, berries, shellfish - for maximum yields, or controlled the environment in other ways, like by burning. If this is the model to strive for - semi-wild, with a diversity of plant and animal life mixed in (including meat and dairy animals) - then what we're looking at is starting to sound a lot like permaculture. Right? Maybe I'm just being too picky about terminology.

Anyway, there is a great deal to chew on in this book. I can see it stimulating some great discussions, and helping spur people to action. It's unfortunate that the online discussions I've seen have sort of devolved into mudslinging, though given the deep philosophical feelings of the vegan community, it's not surprising.

God damn it. I really did not want this book to be true. I hated it when it came out, I cheered when vegan anarchists in my hometown of San Francisco threw a pepper-laced pie in Keith's face. Such an angry vegan was I. I wrote a whole book about factory farms and I have a vegan tattoo.

And I can't do it anymore.

Depression? Check. Anger? Check. Exhaustion? Check. Mild eating disorder? Check. Apparently these are not symptoms of living in 21st century America, but rather, of not eating meat. And I believe it. I've been "vegan" since I was about 17 and there hasn't been a solid year in the last decade that I haven't eaten meat and dairy at some point. If I can't stick to it, maybe it's because we aren't meant to.

The idea that my suicidal thoughts are just a dietary deficiency is revolutionary to me. Is that the case for everyone? No, and she makes that quite clear in the book. But my story sounded far too much like hers: a girl in her twenties with no health problems can't even walk up a flight of stairs or make it through a day of work. And then I eat meat, and I feel better. And hate myself for it.

I think her most powerful points are about grain production and oil. I don't own a car and I try to bike everywhere. I sold my car right around the time of the BP oil spill and never looked back. But veganism isn't the answer to our environmental problems - it is, in fact, part of the problem. This is something we as vegans put our fingers in our ears and went "la la la la la" to whenever someone tried to bring it up.

Is this the greatest book ever? No. Her writing is at times awkward, and she could have cited more nonpartisan sources, but at the end of it, her theories are sound and the evidence is overwhelming. It explains too much of why I have suffered for so long.

You should read this book if you've ever 1) been vegetarian or vegan 2) care about the environment 3) care about animals 4) want to understand humanity's place in the "food system" or 5) live in a big city or urban area and have no access to your own food. It's not perfect but it is radical and revolutionary in a culture that's increasingly losing touch with reality and coming up with dumber and simpler ways to "save" the planet.

Review here: http://lady-of-letters.blogspot.com

As with most books by this trio of authors, I disliked Deep Green Resistance. First, let me explain the layout of the book. The first section (mostly written by Lierre Keith) is centered on the philosophy and motivation behind the book. Section two (written by Aric McBay) is actually quite good and is all about building a movement -- and I would suggest these few chapters for those interested in doing so. The last section is just a quick wrap-up (again by Lierre Keith).

Now I will tell you the fundamental problem I have with this book, and with anything else written by Derrick Jensen or his buddies. The purpose of this book is to completely dismantle civilization, and to go back to pre-agricultural societies. Let that set in for a second. The authors think to themselves "where did this planet start going to hell?", they picked a date approximately 10,000 years ago, and went with that. Unfortunately, the authors do not provide their vision of an ideal future in this book. Actually, they sort of do, but it doesn't explain the part where BILLIONS of people die (population of the world pre-agriculture: way less than half of one billion, and the authors state that 20,000 humans would be a nice number), electricity and running water are things of the past, medications (not to mention birth control!) that we use today are no longer manufactured, and we all hunt and gather to eat. For some reason, the idea of going back to an age where a simple infected cut could kill me isn't too exciting. I also like taking hot showers and not freezing to death in the winter. I'm also not sure where humans can go to hunt and gather these days. Farms? But that would defeat the point!

The authors also make the somewhat ignorant conclusion that "civilization" and "indigenous societies" are mutually exclusive categories. They do not explain how a population reduction might occur (but state that it is necessary), except for one mention of the one-child policy (this stated by a so-called feminist), and mention that when "society inevitably collapses" the population reduction will occur anyway. If you think that through, you can imagine that the people that Jensen, et. al., would least like to remain on the planet will be those with the most resources to ensure that they aren't the ones to kick it when the planet goes to hell. That's not a great philosophy to live by if you're a member of the global poor. The authors also mention that "[o]ur goal is not to bring down the US government or any government," which is probably necessary to say to cover their asses, but is entirely antithetical to the idea of bringing down civilization as we know it.

Deep Green Resistance, and most of Jensen's books, employ many rhetorical devices without a lot of facts, relevant citations or follow-up. For example, I'm sure I heard the cutting-off-the-fingers anecdote in at least Endgame. And the authors certainly make sure to state that 200 species a day are kicking the bucket AS YOU READ THIS BOOK. So please go out and... blow something up? Maybe? The authors aren't really too specific about that. They are too busy being authors to start the resistance movement, hence this book -- to get you to do it instead!

Many of the issues I have with this book center around author Lierre Keith. I certainly hated the book The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability because of it's abundant lack of facts and absurd stereotypes and generalizations about vegans and vegetarians. Keith goes to great lengths in this book to discuss that she is a feminist. Now, I'm a feminist, and I completely agree that any movements that call themselves radical need to have a feminist/womanist perspective to avoid the numerous pitfalls of many previous movements in history. However, Keith is also adamantly anti-porn, is pro one-child policy (so much for choice!) and seems to believe in biological determinism (she mentions that the "starving boyfriends" of her stupid vegan female friends are always pining for some dead cow soup that she serves at potlucks). Also, when mentioning rapists in the counter-culture, she only mentioned black activists... I'm sure she could have mentioned that rapists come in all skin colors. She also uses a lot of ableist language which I find to be distinctly alienating, as at times she literally equates the term "insane" with "sociopath."

And honestly, I don't know why a book about environmental radical movements needs to be so vehemently anti-vegan. I have a hard time taking somebody who contributes to the slaughter of 25 BILLION animals per year (in the US alone) seriously when they say they're sad that animal species are going extinct, or that they wonder why overfishing occurs. I also can't take her seriously when I assume from The Vegetarian Myth that she only ever ate bread and lettuce while vegan when she says things like veganism causes "general lassitude" or that "[a] food ethic stripped of protein and fat may meet ideological needs, but it will not meet the biological needs of the human template." Dear Lierre Keith, vegans actually do eat enough protein and fat. See, for example, quinoa or avocados. It's not that hard. She also rails against industrial agriculture, global warming, and deforestation in the Amazon when vegans are hoping to help avoid those things by turning down animal products!! And I love her view of the future where "[p]eople who bring soy products to permaculture potlucks start getting funny looks." Technically, soybeans are a major ingredient in livestock feed so anybody who brings burgers should probably get funny looks too!

Another thing that seemed counter to Keith's feminism was the fat-shaming statements of people being obese when they eat "bad" food, as if refined carbohydrates are the only things leading to adiposity, and as if being fat is a horrible thing. "Fat people are probably the most exhausted humans on the planet, as minute to minute their bodies cannot access the energy they need to function." What? Please tell that to all of the athletic fat people, or non-athletic fat people who are not continuously exhausted. Finally, Keith wraps up this section stating that "[f]ood should be a nourishing and nurturing part of our culture" but clearly not when people are so afraid of being fat that they spend the better part of their lives dieting and hating their bodies.

Lierre Keith also had some kind of amazing time during the northeast blackouts of 2003, saying that she didn't see any drawbacks to it. I remember the blackout well because my family's house was out of power for over a week. We didn't go without electricity or using our cars as we had to eat, go to work, and do all sorts of other things that humans do. We did what many people did, and used a diesel powered generator to cook food, run the fridge so our food didn't spoil, and take showers. The fact that the power went out for a while in 2003 doesn't give us any indication of what a future without fossil fuels will look like. And considering that all of the authors of this book are against solar, wind and geothermal power, that future (according to them) will be completely lacking in electricity.

And to wrap up my thoughts about Lierre Keith, I wonder why she has such stupid (according to her) friends. Every anecdote about her friends inevitably leads to some stupid thing they did that made her feel like she was so much better than everyone else. I guess she just has an inferiority complex which leads her to hang out with vegans, new-agers and yoga aficionados.

This book criticizes nearly every radical and counter-cultural movement in the past, with a few exceptions. Lierre Keith made a progression something like teenager's brains aren't fully formed (according to some fishy MRI study), the 60s counter-culture was mostly made of young people, and Timothy Leary sucked, QED. I really wonder what they would say about Occupy, except I think they'd probably find a way to hate them too!

Finally, the authors of this book seem to hate fascism, but without any kind of clear road to the future, which by necessity has to include a political viewpoint, is going to lead in that direction. Especially when the future radicals are armed with ideas like the population has to be reduced by about 90%, vegans are braindead, and people are only allowed to have one child. Aric McBay also mentioned that people who commit environmental crimes should be executed. I certainly wouldn't want him to be in charge of deciding who gets hung in the future. (I'm certainly anti-death penalty, and I thought most true radicals were!)½

This is hardly the first book to acknowledge the desperation of our current predicament. Many books have addressed the devastation of our planet's oceans, soil, and forests, have pointed out that we are living in the midst of an anthropogenic mass extinction of unprecedented speed and voracity. It's easy to find books discussing the ongoing genocide against indigenous peoples, and the ongoing devastation of their landbases and rivers for the profits of the rich, working under the malicious banner of "progress". We have many books about soil erosion turning farmland to desert, and pesticide effluents killing rivers and leaving dead zones in our oceans. Many books are available that acknowledge we live in a pornographic culture and a rape culture, a culture with little respect for women and children. For decades books have been telling us that toxic chemicals from factories have entered our bodies, that women can no longer even nurse without passing along dioxins to their children, toxins dangerous at even at a few parts per trillion. We have books that recognize that corporations, as persons, are genocidal maniacs who will profit from any atrocity they can possibly get away with, will leave our planet a barren husk so long as we do not stop them. Nor is this even the first book to argue that we must stop them.

What is different about Deep Green Resistance is that it is the first book that offers a solution that is scaled to the size of our predicament. In the past, books have usually suggested answers such as getting involved in your community, making better consumer choices, writing letters to the editor, planting gardens, donating to worthy charities, and spreading awareness of the problems we're facing. These are good moral decisions to make, but as political tools for change they are not effective, and it becomes an immense problem when these sort of actions become the backbone of our movement for a saner world. Self-improvement and token actions, although they might help us to relieve guilt, are not going to cut it. If we are going to save this sickly planet, we are going to need to organize ourselves squarely against systems of power, and fight them as hard as we can. The authors of this book have clearly thought long and hard about how we need to organize, how we need to strategize, and what sort of pitfalls we need to watch out for. If you love this planet as much as I do, I hope you read this book and take what it has to say to heart. We will need all the heart and courage that we can muster.

I really did want to like this book and it seemed to start off on the right foot. However, the more I read the more I realized that the "evidence" (frequently anecdotes) presented was often flimsy at best. Worse, there are many instances where items stated as fact (i.e. humans have no bacteria in the stomach) are patently false.

While I do certainly believe that a paleo-style diet is a good choice for humans, other authors like Mark Sisson and Gary Taubes do a much better job of analyzing primary literature and leading the reader through scientific studies. My final impression of this book is that Keith has simply traded one extremist view for another.

I have my issues with The Vegetarian Myth, one of the first being the title, which I find more polemic than the text itself. But on the whole she provides a great deal of solid information showing how vegetarian and particularly vegan diets are both ecologically destructive and personally unhealthy, how addiction to grains has influenced much of our human history, how eating meat and animal products can be a moral and responsible choice, and why we need to focus our fight against factory farms and large agribusinesses instead. She backs her points up with scientific citations as well as her own powerful experiences.½

This was a frustrating book for me. I sympathize with Keith's critique of the factory farm system and defense of humanely pasture-raised animals as a sustainable food source. However, she goes overboard in her attacks on veganism and vegetarianism. She attributes her health problems to over a decade on a low-fat vegan diet, and she may be right. But that does not mean that all vegetarians or even all vegans eat such a diet lacking in basic nutrition. It also is possible for vegetarians and vegans to eat largely (or even entirely) from local sustainable sources rather than rely on big agribusiness for veggie burgers and other processed foods. Most of all, her aggressive tone of superiority will turn people away from her arguments more than will it win her converts.

To say that I hated this book would be incorrect. It's not that there's much in this book to hate, it's too vacillating, confusing, and utterly contradictory for that. Simply put, this book is under-researched and laden with unsupported statements, speculations and anecdotes. The only thing to hate about this book is that people will read it, trusting Keith to have given them good, true, useful information, and go on to make bad dietary choices.

The first problem with this book is that it almost never attacks veganism. It does attack many things: agriculture, big corporations, industrialization, environmental destruction, factory farms, and low fat diets (to name just a few). I think you'd be hard pressed to find any veg*ns who don't also believe that most, if not all, of the above mentioned have terrible ramifications and should be prevented. While not all US veg*ns are committed to ending the destruction of our planet, I think that many become enlightened as to the problems with many of the systems of our US culture and become committed to ending them.

So really, this book could have been called "The Agriculture Myth," but that wouldn't have generated as much shock value or sold as many books.

Keith does a makes a lot of radical statements, and then goes on to list many unrelated (and mostly un-referenced) "facts" that don't substantiate that claim, implying that the "facts" directly support her radical statements. For example, she states that veg*ns eat grains, grains are made out of carbohydrates which are turned into glucose and lead to diabetes. This implies that all veg*ns are at high risk of developing diabetes. Is there any peer-reviewed study referenced that makes this statement directly? Of course not. She leaves it to you to jump the gaps between her unsupported statements to make your own conclusions.

Keith also likes to take facts to their logical extremes. Eating plants destroys microorganisms and insects, therefore veg*nism is a product of death. So you may as well eat meat. Annual grains destroy soil and lead to monocrops of annual plants. Hence anybody who eats grains is directly causing the destruction of topsoil. Humans can't eat cellulose, and cows can, therefore humans should eat cows and not plants. I would say that this is a faulty philosophical system at best. It's also a great way to build up big straw-person arguments to support a point.

The "Nutritional" chapter of this book was really the worst of it, and here's why. According to Keith - who assumes that the plural of anecdote is data - here are approximately some of the problems I, a vegan, should be suffering from:

memory loss, depression, anorexia, diabetes, vitamin defficiency, "holes in [my] brain", exhaustion, breast cancer, Alzheimer's, bad teeth, digestive inflammation, rage, bone and joint problems, menstrual problems, fibroids, cysts, giving birth to babies with birth defects, thyroid problems, coldness, dry skin, early death and suicide

Whew. Unfortunately for her thesis (and fortunately for me), I do not and have not suffered from any of the above ailments. I'm sorry that Keith suffers from terrible health issues, but to assume that everybody has the same life experiences as her is incorrect. To assume that her health issues were directly related to veganism is also probably incorrect, but not being a doctor or nutritionist, I'm not qualified to make that claim. (Nor is she.)

Keith also drags out a lot of those tired, old, debunked stereotypes about veg*ns. You've heard them. We don't eat any fat or protein. We're sick all the time. Male veg*ns grow boobs because they eat too much soy. Really?

At one point Keith rails against conflating correlation and causation, on approximately page 164. I agree. I'm a scientist and a natural skeptic, and I know a thing or two about statistics. Rewind to page 151: "[E]pidemiologists do know that multiple sclerosis... is most prevalent in cultures where wheat and rye are staple foods." Did you catch the correlation being confused for causation in that statement? It's not blatant, but subtle and implied. Fast forward to page 172: "The past fifteen years have seen a reduction in fat consumption of almost 25 percent... Did you get healthier? Or did you notice that the incidence of diseases commonly blamed on animal products has gone from high to epidemic?" Maybe Keith just doesn't realize that those correlated facts aren't necessarily directly related, but she goes through such great pains to tell us how smart and enlightened she is that I'm sure she realizes it.

There are some truly baffling statements in this book. "Anorexics have holes in their brains; so do eaters of soy." Needless to say, that statement wasn't followed up by a reference. Also, "remember the many happy endings provided by another estrogen mimic [she is referring to soy isoflavones], diethylstilbestrol, aka DES." Soy products aren't synthetic estrogens, so why compare them like this?

Keith also imparts on veg*ns the mindset of the naive, the hopelessly child-like and the ignorant. Such a patronizing attitude is insulting and hostile. I don't know what Keith hopes to gain from making such an attack, and it is clearly not backed up by any peer reviewed scientific research, but Keith's own prejudices.

This book is just plain bad. There is no general thesis, no cohesion, just a long, rant-filled look at how terrible veg*nism (but more likely, Big Ag) is. If you were to take the points in this book to their logical conclusion, you would have to eat a diet composed entirely of raw meat that you hunted yourself from indigenous animals that forage on polycultures of perennials. Good luck with that.

I don't know whether or not a diet high in animal fat is bad for you or good for you at this point. I do, however know that carbs make me feel aweful. Even the whole grain ones.

The book is well written and researched. I worry a bit about the facts being a bit skewed, but I also worry about the vegetarian side doing the same. Also, her solution to save the Earth and ourselves is to end agriculture which is never going to happen. Unrealistic solutions really are not solutions at all.