The New Breadline: Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century

Decades of humanitarian aid experience and his current work with the World Food Program make food activist Bauer well qualified to inform listeners of the root causes and branching complexities that lead to food insecurity on a massive scale. Bridging the personal and the prescriptive, this author-narrated audiobook maintains a tone balanced between a reminiscence and a briskly straightforward report. With a sibilant, slightly French-accented voice, Bauer incorporates his Haitian American identity throughout with quotes from Jacques Roumain’s Masters of the Dew heading each chapter—a repetition that adds a poetic cadence to the listening experience and reminds all audiences of one severely hunger-afflicted nation’s cultural history. Bauer explains how political history and contemporary politics, particularly the politics of conflict, colonialism, and marginality, are intrinsic to all forms of food insecurity, as much as “la pluie et prix” (rain and prices) are to mass famine. As globalization artificially suppresses prices, destroying self-sufficient smallholders, and global warming makes the rains unpredictable, the future prescriptions Bauer outlines emphasize locality and sustainability.