This New York Times bestseller recounts the true story of the touching gift bestowed on the US by the Maasai people in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In June of 2002, a mere nine months since the September 11 attacks, a very unusual ceremony begins in a far-flung village in western Kenya. An American diplomat is surrounded by hundreds of Maasai people. A gift is about to be bestowed upon the American men, women, and children, and he is there to accept it. The gift is as unexpected as it is extraordinary. Hearts are raw as these legendary Maasai warriors offer their gift to a grieving people half a world away. Word of the gift will travel newswires around the globe, and for the heartsick American nation, the gift of fourteen cows emerges from the choking dust and darkness as a soft light of hope―and friendship. With stunning paintings from Thomas Gonzalez, master storyteller Carmen Agra Deedy (in collaboration with Naiyomah) hits all the right notes in this elegant story of generosity that crosses boundaries, nations, and cultures.

A young boy, Dwight Martin, growing up in the 1960s spends the summer at his grandparents farm in North Carolina. He takes comfort in the wild yarns spun by his grandfather, who boasts that the stories are true and makes Dwight pay him to hear each successive chapter. As Dwight grows to manhood, he discounts the tall tales, but when his grandfather dies, he learns that most of the stories were true--and he finds out what the old man did with all of the nickels and dimes Dwight had paid him. Inspired in part by the raucous humor of Mark Twain and tapping into the American pop culture of the 1960s and '70s, Cow Across America is a book about the hopeful power of stories to link the generations.

After spending almost five years sailing alone around the world, author Harberts decided it was time to let people back into his life. Armed with simple curiousity and an uncooperative mule, he crosses the every day divide between isolation and companionship on a 3,500 mile odyssey across America.

From leading ecology advocates, a revealing look at our dependence on cows and a passionate appeal for sustainable living. In Cowed, globally recognized environmentalists Denis and Gail Boyer Hayes offer a revealing analysis of how our beneficial, centuries-old relationship with bovines has evolved into one that now endangers us. Long ago, cows provided food and labor to settlers taming the wild frontier and helped the loggers, ranchers, and farmers who shaped the country’s landscape. Our society is built on the backs of bovines who indelibly stamped our culture, politics, and economics. But our national herd has doubled in size over the past hundred years to 93 million, with devastating consequences for the country’s soil and water. Our love affair with dairy and hamburgers doesn’t help either: eating one pound of beef produces a greater carbon footprint than burning a gallon of gasoline. Denis and Gail Hayes begin their story by tracing the co-evolution of cows and humans, starting with majestic horned aurochs, before taking us through the birth of today’s feedlot farms and the threat of mad cow disease. The authors show how cattle farming today has depleted America’s largest aquifer, created festering lagoons of animal waste, and drastically increased methane production. In their quest to find fresh solutions to our bovine problem, the authors take us to farms across the country from Vermont to Washington. They visit worm ranchers who compost cow waste, learn that feeding cows oregano yields surprising benefits, talk to sustainable farmers who care for their cows while contributing to their communities, and point toward a future in which we eat less, but better, beef. In a deeply researched, engagingly personal narrative, Denis and Gail Hayes provide a glimpse into what we can do now to provide a better future for cows, humans, and the world we inhabit. They show how our relationship with cows is part of the story of America itself.

A noted cultural critic and NPR essayist offers a lively and provocative account of his hitchhiking odyssey across the United States, documenting his experiences along the way and reexamining America's onetime love affair with the road trip. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Mad Cow U.S.A. shatters the false belief that the government and food industry would never let it happen here. Even as tens of thousands of cows died in Britain, the government denied the risk to human beings. Knowing the similar risk in the U.S., government and industry have managed a successful public relations offensive to keep Americans in the dark. Rampton and Stauber expose, for the first time, the deadly game of "dementia roulette" being played with our food supply.

Describes, in a completely convincing way, the drab, sometimes terrifying world of a modern "farm" seen through the eyes of a bull.