This was not an easy book to write. For many of you, it won’t be an easy book to read. I know. I was a vegan for almost twenty years. I know the reasons that compelled me to embrace an extreme diet and they are honorable, ennobling even. Reasons like justice, compassion, a desperate and all-encompassing longing to set the world right. To save the planet—the last trees bearing witness to ages, the scraps of wilderness still nurturing fading species, silent in their fur and feathers. To protect the vulnerable, the voiceless. To feed the hungry. At the very least to refrain from participating in the horror of factory farming.
This book is written to further those passions, that hunger.
The mark of a good journalist is an endless stream of connected details that compels you to go that one more paragraph on before putting it down; the mark of a good writer is not being able to find one small part better than the others to cite in a blog post to give you the gist of what they are saying -- even if you steadfastly won't read the book, even if you don't trust the sources over your own, read just this one teaser page, the opening of Chapter One, the overview of the background, the motives, the situation, the vision of change and proposition of a solution, and if that alone doesn't leave you wanting to know more about the food you eat, all of the food you eat, vegan and otherwise, then move along folks, there's nothing more to see here.
But if it does, then by all means tune in to Lierre Keith, radical feminist on a planet-saving mission ...
“The Vegetarian Myth is one of the most important books people, masses of them, can read, as we try with all our might, intelligence, skill, hope, dream and memory, to turn the disastrous course the planet is on. Or rather that we are on because of our abuse of the planet. It’s a wonderful book, full of thoughtful, soulful teachings, and appropriate rage. My admiration for Lierre’s sharing of life experience and knowledge is complete. Thank you.” (Alice Walker)