Looking for a holiday gift for a food and farm-obsessed friend or family member? Here are a few recommendations from the Civil Eats team. Here’s to good reading in a difficult year.

Biting the Hands That Feed Us
By Baylen Linnekin

Laws and regulations are designed to help us, right? When it comes to building a sustainable food movement, that may not always be true. In this provocative book, lawyer Baylen Linnekin makes a case for why U.S. food policy might benefit from a “less is more” approach. He shares examples of how laws have created unnecessary food waste, prevented residents from growing food in home gardens, and overburdened small producers and growers with regulations requiring them to use pricey equipment—instead of less expensive methods that would achieve similar outcomes. Linnekin leaves the reader with guiding principles of how we can transform food policy in a direction that promotes—not inhibits—sustainability.

— Kristine Wong

Bountiful Harvest: From Land to Table 

By Betty LaDuke

In a year when farmworkers’ rights came to the fore in food systems discussions, Betty LaDuke’s beautiful homage to the fruit, vegetable, and cut-flower harvesters of Oregon feels especially relevant. The 83-year-old artist, whose previous books have focused on women, artists, and social change throughout Africa and Latin America, dedicates this book to “the hands in the dirt people” who inspired her nearly life-sized plywood mural panels. Their pulsating colors and simplified forms convey both the joy and dignity of field work while the ever-present hunched backs of laborers speaks to the grueling, repetitive nature of their job.Referring to this year’s political climate, Michael Moore of Fry Family Farm points out that  “this is work Americans don’t do any more.” At harvest time he adds 150 grape pickers to his team, noting that among the applicants, “We don’t have a single person who is a naturalized citizen.” To learn more about the LaDuke’s relationship with the farm laborers, watch this affecting video, Paintbrush Harvest.

— Nancy Matsumoto

Changing Season: A Father, a Daughter, A Family Farm
By David Mas Masumoto with Nikiko Masumoto

This book inspired me to write about the need to support farmers earlier this year. The Masumotos are heroes to many, and here they lay bare their fears, hopes, and love of the land and for each other. As father and daughter, they share their stories of history, culture, and farming lessons on peaches and nectarines, as Mas prepares to hand down the family farm to Nikiko, who is leading a new generation of farmers to steward the land.

— Naomi Starkman

Fixing the Food System: Changing How We Produce and Consume Food
By Steve Clapp

Steve Clapp’s Fixing the Food System reviews the past and current history of calls for a national food policy, the most contentious controversies over food and nutrition issues that have impeded development of such a policy, and the work of advocates to achieve one. As this book makes clear, this history began decades ago. Clapp has been a keen observer of the food politics scene in Washington for decades and I can’t think of anyone who ought to know it better. Fixing the Food System reviews the major debates he witnessed—the Dietary Guidelines, of course, but also attempts to set policy for food safety, marketing to children, hunger in America, and humane treatment of farm animals, among others.

— Marion Nestle (excerpted from her longer review)

Food Anatomy: The Curious Parts & Pieces of Our Edible World

By Julia Rothman

We spend a lot of time here at Civil Eats reading the news and wonky food policy books. Once in a while, we do like to have some fun, and this illustrated food love letter offers just that. Rothman’s illustrations are beautiful, hand-made, and informative, from the multitude of grains to the plentitude of street food; from a how-to on making cheese to the edible parts of flowering plants. Her delicious drawings and descriptions of the universality of food are a joyful reminder that food is love.

— Naomi Starkman