Renewing the Food Traditions of North America is a dramatic call to recognize, celebrate, and conserve the great diversity of foods that give North America the distinctive culinary identity that reflects its multi-cultural heritage. It offers us rich natural and cultural histories as well as recipes and folk traditions associated with one hundred of the rarest food plants and animals in North America. In doing so, it reminds us that what we choose to eat can either conserve or deplete the cornucopia of our continent. In addition, it offers a eulogy to a once-common game food that has gone extinct--the passenger pigeon--to underscore how rapidly a food species can be depleted if its habitat is destroyed and harvesting pressures are ignored. Rather than dwelling on the tragic losses, it highlights the success stories of food recovery, habitat restoration, and market revitalization which chefs, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, and foresters have recently achieved. Through such "food parables," editor Nabhan and his colleagues build a persuasive argument for eater-based conservation.

Implementing that call to action, the Renewing America's Food Tradition collaborative involves some of the country's most inspiring and effective non-profit organizations in targeting hundreds of rare and neglected foods unique to North America for such restoration and recovery. They have been compiled into the first-ever comprehensive list of the wild and domesticated food varieties that are threatened or endangered in North America, including heirloom seeds, fruits, and nuts; heritage breeds of livestock and poultry; fish and game; and wild-foraged plants.

In addition, this book offers a tool-kit to engage those who wish to personally support and participate in such recoveries, and a list of food festivals held across the continent to honor and enjoy some of the country's most iconic foods, from crab cakes to maple syrup and file gumbo. Organized by food nations named for the ecological and cultural keystone foods of each region--Salmon Nation, Bison Nation, Chile Pepper Nation, Cornbread Nation, among others--this book offers you an altogether fresh perspective on the culinary traditions of North America. After savoring this book, you will never look at the geography of food--or the necessity of conserving the biocultural foundation of culinary diversity--the same way again.

"Gary Paul Nabhan has dedicated himself to nurturing the vital ties which link community, culture and landscape. We are threatened with the loss of productive agricultural lands and farmers, and the productive species which feed our bodies and souls. This book shows the importance of food as the essential bond between what we eat and who we are. A must read for everyone who cares about food and the land from whence it comes. Great recipes, too!"
—Patrick F. O'Toole, rancher and President of the Family Farm Alliance

"Nabhan and his colleagues honor all of us who grow food with a sense of gratitude for our ancestors from the human, plant and animal worlds."
—David Mas Masumoto, farmer and author of Epitaph for a Peach

"If you're going to buy a single book about American food, buy this one. Discover a remapping of our narrow political boundaries in a new vision of North America's 13 basic 'Food Nations.' Explore as iffor the first time ecological territories named Bison, Gumbo, Pinyon Nut, Maple Syrup. Learn how--through recipes, images, mini-histories--to help save and renew these most precious resources. Knowledge is everything. I'm grateful to the authors and publishers of this vital book for making knowing, saving and savoring one and the same action."
—Betty Fussell, author of The Story of Corn and Raising Steaks

Renewing America's Food Traditions is a beautifully illustrated dramatic call to recognize, celebrate, and conserve the great diversity of foods that gives North America its distinctive culinary identity that reflects our multicultural heritage. It offers us rich natural and cultural histories as well as recipes and folk traditions associated with the rarest food plants and animals in North America. In doing so, it reminds us that what we choose to eat can either conserve or deplete the cornucopia of our continent.

While offering a eulogy to a once-common game food that has gone extinct--the passenger pigeon--the book doesn't dwell on tragic losses. Instead, it highlights the success stories of food recovery, habitat restoration, and market revitalization that chefs, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, and foresters have recently achieved. Through such "food parables," editor Gary Paul Nabhan and his colleagues build a persuasive argument for eater-based conservation.

In addition, this book offers the first-ever list of foods at risk in America (more than a thousand), shows how all of us can personally support and participate in such recoveries, and lists food festivals held across the continent to honor and enjoy some of the country's most iconic foods, from crab cakes to maple syrup and filé gumbo. Organized by "food nations" named for the ecological and cultural keystone foods of each region--Salmon Nation, Bison Nation, Chile Pepper Nation, among others--this book offers an altogether fresh perspective on the culinary traditions of North America.

Writer, professor, and conservationist Gary Paul Nabhan is the director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University. Nabhan's writing is widely anthologized and translated, and has won the John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing, a Western States Book Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship.Deborah Madison is a freelance writer and board member of the Foundation for Bio-Diversity and the Seed Savers Exchange, among others. As a freelance writer she has contributed to Cooking Light, Williams Sonoma's Taste, Vegetarian Times, Gourmet, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, Garden Design, Fine Cooking, Organic Style, the LA Times, Orion, and others.Ashley Rood was coauthor of the precursor of this volume, a RAFT book that was featured as one of the hundred top food stories by Saveur magazine in 2005. An environmental advocate and sustainable agriculture activist who works for Environmental Defense in San Francisco, California, Rood is a graduate of the Northern Arizona University, where she coordinated a community-supported agriculture (CSA) project that still feeds some 170 families.Anne Minard is an environmental journalist who has worked or freelanced for several newspapers, magazines, and radio programs in the West. Also a graduate of Northern Arizona University, Minard is the author of books and countless feature articles on science and nature. For the Center for Sustainable Environments, she has spearheaded an agritourism initiative in Arizona that links heritage food promotion to the visitation of great natural and cultural landscapes in that state.Makale Faber Cullen is a cultural anthropologist who directs the RAFT, Ark, and Presidia initiatives of Slow Food USA at its national headquarters in Brooklyn, New York. Prior to working with Slow Food, she developed in-school and public programs for City Lore and the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklife.Don Bixby, DVM, is the former executive director of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, which was honored with the Slow Food International Biodiversity Award during his tenure of leadership. He currently serves as ALBC's Technical Programs Director and as representative to the RAFT collaborative. Coauthor of several books on the conservation of rare livestock breeds, Bixby has been an advisor to the USDA and to many nonprofit breed associations that are working to conserve America's genetic diversity of livestock. Don is one of the people most responsible for the revival of standard breeds of American heritage turkeys in the U.S. marketplace.