Originally published in 1969, the documentary evidence of poverty and malnutrition in the American South showcased in Still Hungry in America still resonates today. The work was created to complement a July 1967 U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty hearings on hunger in America. At those hearings, witnesses documented examples of deprivation afflicting hundreds of thousands of American families. The most powerful testimonies came from the authors of this profoundly disturbing and important book. Al Clayton’s sensitive camerawork enabled the subcommittee members to see the agonizing results of insufficient food and improper diet, rendered graphically in stunted, weakened and fractured bones, dry, shrunken, and ulcerated skin, wasting muscles, and bloated legs and abdomens. Physician and child psychiatrist Robert Coles, who had worked with these populations for many years, described with fierce clarity the medical and psychological effects of hunger. Coles’s powerful narrative, reinforced by heartbreaking interviews with impoverished people and accompanied by 101 photographs taken by Clayton in Appalachia, rural Mississippi, and Atlanta, Georgia, convey the plight of the millions of hungry citizens in the most affluent nation on earth. A new foreword by historian Thomas J. Ward Jr. analyzes food insecurity among today’s rural and urban poor and frames the current crisis in the American diet not as a scarcity of food but as an overabundance of empty calories leading to obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

Children can begin to understand what poverty and hunger are, how they affect people in countries all over the world and how readers can help those affected.

Food insecurity rates, which skyrocketed with the Great Recession, have yet to fall to pre-recession levels. Food pantries are stretched thin, and states are imposing new restrictions on programs like SNAP that are preventing people from getting crucial government assistance. At the same time, we see an increase in obesity that results from lack of access to healthy foods. The poor face a daily choice between paying bills and paying for food.

Food was a critical front in the Cold War battle for Asia. “Where Communism goes, hunger follows” was the slogan of American nation builders who fanned out into the countryside to divert rivers, remodel villages, and introduce tractors, chemicals, and genes to multiply the crops consumed by millions. This “green revolution” has been credited with averting Malthusian famines, saving billions of lives, and jump-starting Asia’s economic revival. Bono and Bill Gates hail it as a model for revitalizing Africa’s economy. But this tale of science triumphant conceals a half century of political struggle from the Afghan highlands to the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, a campaign to transform rural societies by changing the way people eat and grow food. The ambition to lead Asia into an age of plenty grew alongside development theories that targeted hunger as a root cause of war. Scientific agriculture was an instrument for molding peasants into citizens with modern attitudes, loyalties, and reproductive habits. But food policies were as contested then as they are today. While Kennedy and Johnson envisioned Kansas-style agribusiness guarded by strategic hamlets, Indira Gandhi, Marcos, and Suharto inscribed their own visions of progress onto the land. Out of this campaign, the costliest and most sustained effort for development ever undertaken, emerged the struggles for resources and identity that define the region today. As Obama revives the lost arts of Keynesianism and counter-insurgency, the history of these colossal projects reveals bitter and important lessons for today’s missions to feed a hungry world.

For more than thirty years, humankind has known how to grow enough food to end chronic hunger worldwide. Yet while the ''Green Revolution'' succeeded in South America and Asia, it never got to Africa. More than 9 million people every year die of hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases every year - most of them in Africa and most of them children. More die of hunger in Africa than from AIDS and malaria combined. Now, an impending global food crisis threatens to make things worse. In the west we think of famine as a natural disaster, brought about by drought; or as the legacy of brutal dictators. But in this powerful investigative narrative, Thurow & Kilman show exactly how, in the past few decades, American, British, and European policies conspired to keep Africa hungry and unable to feed itself. As a new generation of activists work to keep famine from spreading, Enough is essential reading on a humanitarian issue of utmost urgency.

Hunger is one of the most significant issues in America. One in eight Americans struggles with hunger, and more than thirteen million children live in food insecure homes. As Christians we are called to address the suffering of the hungry and poor: "For I was hungry, and you gave me food . . ." (Matthew 25:35). However, the problems of hunger and poverty are too large and too complex for any one of us to resolve individually. I Was Hungry offers not only an assessment of the current crisis but also a strategy for addressing it. Jeremy Everett, a noted advocate for the hungry and poor, calls Christians to work intentionally across ideological divides to build trust with one another and impoverished communities and effectively end America's hunger crisis. Everett, appointed by US Congress to the National Commission on Hunger, founded and directs the Texas Hunger Initiative, a successful ministry that is helping to eradicate hunger in Texas and around the globe. Everett details the organization's history and tells stories of its work with communities from West Texas to Washington, DC, helping Christians of all political persuasions understand how they can work together to truly make a difference.

Have the lives of the world's poorest, neediest people improved over the past few decades? What policies have lifted some people out of the worst forms of poverty, and what conditions keep others mired within it? The Poorest and Hungry: Assessment, Analyses, and Actions answers such questions, bringing together studies of both what causes and what reduces severe poverty from a diverse group of development specialists. The book focuses on the poorest and hungry in society and identifies areas for action. Stable economic growth; targeted social programs and insurance that invest in and protect nutrition, health, and education; and political and social inclusion of previously marginalized groups emerge as the essential requirements for poverty reduction, and this book's contributors identify strategies for promoting all three. The Poorest and Hungry is an important resource for policymakers, development specialists, and others concerned with helping the world's poorest people.