Kirjahaku

A powerful and important work of investigative journalism that explores the runaway growth of the American meatpacking industry and its dangerous consequences"A worthy update to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and a chilling indicator of how little has changed since that 1906 muckraking classic." -- Mother Jones"I tore through this book. . . . Books like these are important: They track the journey of our thinking about food, adding evidence and offering guidance along the way." --Wall Street JournalOn the production line in American packing-houses, there is one cardinal rule: the chain never slows. Under pressure to increase supply, the supervisors of meat-processing plants have routinely accelerated the pace of conveyors, leading to inhumane conditions, increased accidents, and food of questionable, often dangerous quality.In The Chain, acclaimed journalist Ted Genoways uses the story of Hormel Foods and its most famous product, Spam--a recession-era staple--to probe the state of the meatpacking industry, from Minnesota to Iowa to Nebraska. Interviewing scores of line workers, union leaders, hog farmers, and local politicians and activists, Genoways reveals an industry pushed to its breaking point--while exposing alarming new trends, from sick or permanently disabled workers to conflict between small towns and immigrant labor. A searching expos in the tradition of Upton Sinclair, Rachel Carson, and Eric Schlosser, The Chain is a mesmerizing story and an urgent warning about the hidden costs of the food we eat.

The family farm lies at the heart of our national identity, yet its future is in peril. Rick Hammond grew up on a small ranch, and for forty years he has raised cattle and crops on his wife's fifth-generation homestead in York County, Nebraska, in hopes of passing it on to their four children. But as the handoff nears, their small family farm--and their entire way of life--are under siege. Rising corporate ownership of land and livestock is forcing small farmers to get bigger and bigger, assuming more debt and more risk. At the same time, after nearly a decade of record-high corn and soybean prices, the bottom has dropped out of the markets, making it ever harder for small farmers to shoulder their loans. All the while, the Hammonds are confronted by encroaching pipelines, groundwater depletion, climate change, and shifting trade policies. Far from an isolated refuge beyond the reach of global events, the family farm is increasingly at the crossroads of emerging technologies and international detente. Following the Hammonds from harvest to harvest, Ted Genoways explores this rapidly changing landscape of small, traditional farming operations, mapping as it unfolds day to day. This Blessed Earth is both a concise exploration of the history of the American small farm and a vivid, nuanced portrait of one family's fight to preserve their legacy and the life they love.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Jos Cuervo inherited his family's humble distillery, La Roje a, in the Tequila Valley. Within a decade, he had transformed it into a complex national enterprise that would become Mexico's leading producer of tequila. Cuervo grew his kingdom of agave by acquiring thousands of acres of estates throughout the valley; he brought electricity and a railroad line to Tequila, so he could reach drinkers across the country. But when the Mexican Revolution erupted, a charge of treason and a death threat against him by Pancho Villa forced Cuervo to flee. His disappearance turned him into an obscure, shadowy historical figure--despite having one of the most famous names in Mexican history.In Tequila Wars, award-winning author Ted Genoways restores Cuervo to his place as a key player in Mexico's formative period. Before the revolution, Cuervo's acclaim spread worldwide, and once war broke out, Cuervo remained an impresario, kingmaker, and cultural force. In the face of his own government's corruption and the nationalism of his northern neighbors, Cuervo reached American drinkers by establishing Mexico's covert form of cross-border commerce with the United States. As the largest and most important distilleries in the Tequila Valley recognized the threat posed by Mexico's unraveling, Cuervo also lobbied for suspending normal competition in favor of "a union of tequila makers"--what would become the first Mexican cartel.With extensive original research, including access to the secret archives of the Cuervo and Sauza families, Genoways follows the violent, unpredictable, and hugely profitable world of tequila through the story of its most successful maker. The first biography of Cuervo, Tequila Wars uncovers the history of the man who would forever change not only the business of tequila, but international relations between Mexico and the United States.

The family farm lies at the heart of our national identity, and yet its future is in peril. Rick Hammond grew up on a farm, and for forty years he has raised cattle and crops on his wife's fifth-generation homestead in Nebraska, in hopes of passing it on to their four children. But as the handoff nears, their family farm--and their entire way of life--are under siege on many fronts, from shifting trade policies, to encroaching pipelines, to climate change. Following the Hammonds from harvest to harvest, Ted Genoways explores the rapidly changing world of small, traditional farming operations. He creates a vivid, nuanced portrait of a radical new landscape and one family's fight to preserve their legacy and the life they love.

Shortly after the third edition of "Leaves of Grass" was published in 1860, Walt Whitman seemed to drop off the literary map, not to emerge again until his brother George was wounded at Fredericksburg, two and a half years later. Past critics have tended to read this silence as evidence of Whitman's indifference to the Civil War during its critical early months. In this penetrating, original, and beautifully written book, Ted Genoways reconstructs those forgotten years - locating Whitman directly through unpublished letters and never-before-seen manuscripts, as well as mapping his associations through rare period newspapers and magazines in which he published.Genoways' account fills a major gap in Whitman's biography and debunks the myth that Whitman was unaffected by the country's march to war. Instead, "Walt Whitman and the Civil War" reveals the poet's active participation in the early Civil War period and elucidates his shock at the horrors of war months before his legendary journey to Fredericksburg, correcting in part the poet's famous assertion that the 'real war will never get in the books'.

Set against the bleak backdrop of the Yukon and the historical moment of the 1897 Klondike gold rush, this chronologically arranged series of sonnets is grounded in the lived experience of Finnish immigrants Anna and Abe Malm. Anna hauls her Anthony Wayne Washer into the wilderness and sets up a laundry business while Abe seeks his fortune. Anna and Abe share a unique history, revealed in the book's epigraph: Anna, nineteen years her husband's senior, had first raised him and then married him.Genoways's graceful formalism makes percussive music of a story marked by isolation and brutal difficulty. He manages a deft and plain-speaking rhyme that is in keeping with the tough lives his poems explore. The poems, which shift in frame from Anna's letters or Abe's diary to third-person verse that captures the characters' inner thoughts, bring the vitality of luminous detail and psychological depth to the arc of history.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Jos Cuervo inherited his family's humble distillery, La Roje a, in the Tequila Valley. Within a decade, he had transformed it into a complex national enterprise that would become Mexico's leading producer of tequila. Cuervo grew his kingdom of agave by acquiring thousands of acres of estates throughout the valley; he brought electricity and a railroad line to Tequila, so he could reach drinkers across the country. But when the Mexican Revolution erupted, a charge of treason and a death threat against him by Pancho Villa forced Cuervo to flee. His disappearance turned him into an obscure, shadowy historical figure--despite having one of the most famous names in Mexican history. In Tequila Wars, award-winning author Ted Genoways restores Cuervo to his place as a key player in Mexico's formative period. Before the revolution, Cuervo's acclaim spread worldwide, and once war broke out, Cuervo remained an impresario, kingmaker, and cultural force. In the face of his own government's corruption and the nationalism of his northern neighbors, Cuervo reached American drinkers by establishing Mexico's covert form of cross-border commerce with the United States. As the largest and most important distilleries in the Tequila Valley recognized the threat posed by Mexico's unraveling, Cuervo also lobbied for suspending normal competition in favor of "a union of tequila makers"--what would become the first Mexican cartel. With extensive original research, including access to the secret archives of the Cuervo and Sauza families, Genoways follows the violent, unpredictable, and hugely profitable world of tequila through the story of its most successful maker. The first biography of Cuervo, Tequila Wars uncovers the history of the man who would forever change not only the business of tequila, but international relations between Mexico and the United States.