When Lisa Knopp was 54, she began tightly restricting what and how much she ate. A whisper, a shadow, or a flicker is what she wanted to become. When she finally realized that the severe restricting that had left her sick and small when she was 15 and 25 had returned when she was deep into middle age, she was full of urgent questions. Why did she respond to that which overwhelmed or threatened her by eating so little? How could she heal from a condition that is caused by a tangle of genetic, biological, familial, psychological, economic, spiritual, and cultural forces? Are eating disorders and disordered eating in older women caused by the same factors as those in younger females? Or are they caused, in part, by the sorrows and frustrations of aging in a culture that sees midlife and beyond as a time marked by increasing deterioration, powerlessness, dependency, and irrelevance?
Knopp’s focus on eating disorders among older women makes Bread unique among “anorexia memoirs.” Most experts agree that about 10 percent of those with eating disorders are older women, though the number is surely higher, since most women who restrict, binge, or purge don’t meet the narrow diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge-eating disorder. And, too, many in this group disguise or misread their symptoms as being due to a health condition or changes associated with aging. For teenagers, symptoms usually manifest as a result of problems in their family of origin. But for older women, symptoms are more likely to manifest as a result of changes in the family they created, including divorce, infidelity, relationship conflicts, an empty nest, financial strains, a child with medical, emotional, or legal problems, and the demands of caring for a sick or aged parent, as well as their own health problems and fear of aging.
In her search for answers, Knopp read the research on eating disorders and imaginatively reentered those dark periods when she was self-starving. Bread, which is at once an illness, food, and spiritual memoir, will convince readers, both those who suffer from a conflicted relationship with food, weight, and self-image and those who do not, that eating disorders and disordered eating are about more than just food and weight. Indeed, they speak of our deepest hungers and desires and the various ways in which we can nourish and fill ourselves.
In recent years, world climate changes have drawn more attention than at any other time in history. What we once called "crazy weather," just a few years ago, is now beginning to be seen as a part of a logical and, in part, predictable pattern, an awesome natural force that we must deal with if man is to avoid disaster of unprecedented proportions.
Climates of Hunger is a book of paramount importance for our time. It will be essential reading not only for professionals in the field—including agricultural meteorologists, political scientists, geographers, sociologists, and business counselors—but for all who are concerned in any way with environmental trends, world and domestic food supplies, and their effects on human institutions.
There is, literally, a world of difference between the statements "Everyone should have adequate food," and "Everyone has the right to adequate food." In George Kent's view, the lofty rhetoric of the first statement will not be fulfilled until we take the second statement seriously. Kent sees hunger as a deeply political problem. Too many people do not have adequate control over local resources and cannot create the circumstances that would allow them to do meaningful, productive work and provide for themselves. The human right to an adequate livelihood, including the human right to adequate food, needs to be implemented worldwide in a systematic way.
Freedom from Want makes it clear that feeding people will not solve the problem of hunger, for feeding programs can only be a short-term treatment of a symptom, not a cure. The real solution lies in empowering the poor. Governments, in particular, must ensure that their people face enabling conditions that allow citizens to provide for themselves.
In a wider sense, Kent brings an understanding of human rights as a universal system, applicable to all nations on a global scale. If, as Kent argues, everyone has a human right to adequate food, it follows that those who can empower the poor have a duty to see that right implemented, and the obligation to be held morally and legally accountable, for seeing that that right is realized for everyone, everywhere.
Hunger is as old as history itself. Indeed, it appears to be a timeless and inescapable biological condition. And yet perceptions of hunger and of the hungry have changed over time and differed from place to place. Hunger has a history, which can now be told.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, hunger was viewed as an unavoidable natural phenomenon or as the fault of its lazy and morally flawed victims. By the middle of the twentieth century, a new understanding of hunger had taken root. Across the British Empire and beyond, humanitarian groups, political activists, social reformers, and nutritional scientists established that the hungry were innocent victims of political and economic forces outside their control. Hunger was now seen as a global social problem requiring government intervention in the form of welfare to aid the hungry at home and abroad. James Vernon captures this momentous shift as it occurred in imperial Britain over the past two centuries.
Rigorously researched, Hunger: A Modern History draws together social, cultural, and political history in a novel way, to show us how we came to have a moral, political, and social responsibility toward the hungry. Vernon forcefully reminds us how many perished from hunger in the empire and reveals how their history was intricately connected with the precarious achievements of the welfare state in Britain, as well as with the development of international institutions, such as the United Nations, committed to the conquest of world hunger. All those moved by the plight of the hungry will want to read this compelling book.
Every year, millions of the rural poor suffer from predictable and preventable seasonal hunger. This hunger is less dramatic but no less damaging than the starvation associated with famines, wars and natural disasters. Seasons of Hunger explores why the world does not react to a crisis that we know will continue year after year.
Seasonal hunger is caused by annual cycles of shrinking food stocks, rising prices, and lack of income. This hidden hunger pushes millions of children to the brink of starvation every year, permanently stunting their physical and cognitive development, weakening their immune systems and opening the door for killer diseases. Action Against Hunger argue that ending seasonal hunger could save millions of young lives and is key to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. This book documents seasonal hunger in four countries - India, Malawi, Mali and Myanmar - including personal stories and country-wide data which shows the magnitude of the problem.
The authors also find encouraging examples of interventions designed to address seasonality - initiatives led by governments, donors and NGOs, and poor people themselves - and propose a package of advocacy messages that could contribute to the global eradication of seasonal hunger. This book will be a valuable resource for journalists, policy makers, NGO members and students of development studies.
READERS
Browse our collection.
PUBLISHERS
See BiblioVault's publisher services.
STUDENT SERVICES
Files for college accessibility offices.
UChicago Accessibility Resources
home | accessibility | search | about | contact us
BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2024
The University of Chicago Press