Books & Media Reviews

Book Review: Hot, Hungry Planet
Lisa Palmer's book, Hot, Hungry Planet, The Fight to Stop a Global Food Crisis in the Face of Climate Change, presents seven case studies of individuals working in different continents in the race against hunger, noting that "with a growing population, the demand for rice and other cereals ...

Book Review: We Fed an Island – the True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time
The book, “We Fed An Island - One Meal at a Time” by Chef Jose Andres (2018, Harper Collins Publisher) describes how the NGO, World Central Kitchen (WCK), reacted to the 2017 Hurricane Maria after it hit Puerto Rico, knocking out power and destroying homes. Several days after the hurricane, Chef...

Feeding America’s Claire Babineaux-Fonteno Cited by Time Magazine
The newly released Time Magazine review (Feb. 20, 2025) of "Women of the Year" features Claire Babineaux-Fonteno for her nation-wide advocacy to end hunger. (https://time.com/7216387/feeding-am...

USAID Library of Project Reports and Evaluations
American Taxpayers often have questions about how funds for foreign aid work. In early 2025 there has also been claims -- and false information -- by Congress and social media about an overall lack of transparency about this aid. The primary or lead aid agency for the US Government is the Unite...

Regenerative Agriculture to Mitigate Hunger: Thurow’s Latest Book
Book Review: Roger Thurow’s Against the Grain: How Farmers Around the Globe are Transforming Agriculture to Nourish the World and Health the Planet (2024, Publisher: Agate Surrey) American journalist, Roger Thurow, has written consistently about global hunger...

Film Mischaracterizes Humanitarian Aid Work
[Editor's note: The following opinion piece was written by career aid worker Amy Leah Potter in response to the recent release of the film "Dirty Angels" which has upset many people in the aid community for its depiction of humanitarian NGOs serving as shells to hide army combatants. The mov...

Why Nations Fail, Famine and the Nobel Prize
The 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded in October to the authors Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson in part for the analysis of international inequalities in their best-selling 2012 book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (Crown Publishers), which arr...

Stalled Progress Against Hunger for Third Consecutive Year
For the third year in a row, global hunger remains persistently high after the increase during and because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The United Nations’...

Book Classic: Famine, Conflict and Response by Fred Cuny
Book Classic: Famine, Conflict and Response: a Basic Guide By Fred Cuny, with Rick Hill (West Hartford, CN: Kumarian Press 1999) This basic, extremely readable text about famine prevention and relief remains a preferred textb...

BOOK REVIEW: The Enduring Struggle: The History of the U.S. Agency for International Development and America’s Uneasy Transformation of the World
BOOK REVIEW: The Enduring Struggle: The History of the U.S. Agency for International Development and America’s Uneasy Transformation of the World, by John Norris. 2021. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publisher. America's primary international assista...