Farming used to be done for the public good; now, most agriculture in America is done mainly for private gain - often at the hidden expense of consumers, as well as the farmworkers in the field. Our current industrial agricultural system benefits the few owners and managers of agribusiness, more than it does the larger number of us who eat and actually do the farm work.

Editor Kimbrell and publisher Island Press, assisted by the Foundation for Deep Ecology and the Center for Food Safety, present us with a rich meal of well-chosen morsels. Among the contributors are the Land Institute's Wes Jackson, Chez Panisse restaurant's Alice Waters, former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, India's Vandana Shiva, Whole Earth magazine editor Peter Warshall and biologist David Ehrenfeld. In addition to the large-format version of the book, a smaller version, without the photos, is available.

Some books, such as Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring", have the power to change history. "Fatal Harvest" may be such a book.

It may help make the transition from the disastrous agriculture of the second half of the 20th century to a renewed approach as to how we feed ourselves healthy food and simultaneously sustain nature.