Hemp advocates tend to get a rapturous look when they talk about their favorite plant. And they have some very good reasons for that.

You can make hemp into clothing, paper, wood composites, personal care products, paint, and food, among other things. Hemp yields several times the amount of fiber per acre that trees do, and as an annual crop, is easier to manage. It doesn’t require the huge amounts of pesticides and herbicides that cotton does, and doesn’t come from fossil fuels like synthetic fabrics. Hemp fiber is also particularly strong, meaning that paper can be recycled more times and textiles last longer. And hempseed oil is a great source of healthy essential fatty acids.

But advocates often go a bit overboard when they describe the benefits of hemp. The plant actually

A pick-your-flavor tour of the planet's cuisines is one of the many delights of Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio's latest book, Hungry Planet, a survey of global food choices. Photographer and journalist traveled to 24 countries to pose families with a week's worth of food.

Results reveal a global food chain of processed food binding people almost everywhere. Menzel's photos encourage disquieting realizations (the universality of Coca-Cola, for example) and some surprising insights (Europeans eat as much packaged foods as Americans, and everyone on earth enjoys a good banana). Deft reporting by D'Aluisio explores complex issues such as the global obesity epidemic. Like any good travelogue, Hungry Planet is most important not for what it illustrates about other people but for what

by Judy Wicks

:: The owner of the White Dog Cafe on building a business and a national movement ::

My story of the White Dog Cafe begins with the first time I walked onto the 3400 block of Sansom Street in 1972. I was enchanted. The narrow tree-lined street, with charming, if somewhat rundown, Victorian brownstone houses, was an oasis from the high-rise dormitories, office buildings, strip malls, and parking garages that surrounded it. The 100-year-old houses on Sansom Street, with a few small businesses on the first floors, were human-scale—quaint, homey, inviting.

I moved into an apartment at 3420 Sansom, future home of the White Dog, and soon learned that the entire block had been condemned to make way for a shopping mall.

I eagerly joined the local community group organized

by Gary Nabhan

:: How a local food system builds health and community wealth ::

On farmers' market Sundays in Flagstaff, Arizona, local growers may offer you heirloom chiles and tomatoes you can't get anywhere else, apples from nearby orchards in Oak Creek Canyon, and verdolagas (purslane) from dry-farmed fields near Sunset Crater. When rains quench the thirst of drought-stricken forests, local foragers bring pinyon nuts, mushrooms, and wild horseradish. Livestock producers bring their Dominique hens, Black Spanish turkeys, pot-bellied pigs, or grass-fed beef. The air is as filled with the discussion of local political issues as it is with the aroma of family-recipe tamales, ­salsa, pesto, and hummus. A decade ago, none of this was readily available.

This market lies smack-dab in one