Food in America: The Past, Present and Future of Food, Farming and the Family Meal. By Andrew F. Smith. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2017. 3 vols. Acid-Free $235.20 (ISBN 978-1-61069-858-0). E-book available (978-1-61069-859-7), call for pricing.

This three-volume set explores the landscape of America in the context of food. The author describes this set as an introduction to thirty current food controversies for undergraduates and general readers. The volumes are divided into three themes: the environment, health and nutrition, and the economy. Each volume is further divided into sections offering a rich history of the given theme, controversies surrounding key issues, and perhaps most interesting, a section of primary source documents highlighting landmark cases that frame each theme in a political and social context. The primary documents are meant to encourage critical thinking of the writer’s’ perspective, biases, and intentions. A useful chronology of landmark events (that do not necessarily coincide with the landmark documents) is also included so that readers and researchers can quickly track the developments of food issues in America. Provided at the conclusion of each section are extensive bibliographies.

There is no shortage of monographs on the social, political, cultural, and historical aspects of food and food production, but this three-volume collection sets out to offer a concise explanation of a wide variety of food issues from a multidisciplinary approach making for an easy to use reference. The entries are written in plain language, which makes it accessible to researchers just getting started. Each chapter includes a helpful section on ideas for the future, which is an objective that turns up frequently in student writing assignments. A strength of this set is the inclusion of primary documents: it allows researchers to view how the controversies and issues described in the book reflect the legal and political landscape. However, the inclusion of these documents also has a drawback; while the described controversies are outlined in the table of contents, the landmark documents are not, which makes them slightly more difficult to refer to, instead requiring the reader to browse. Overall, this reference would be a fine addition for two- and four-year undergraduate libraries that support curriculums in Environmental, Food or Agricultural Studies as it provides broad but clear and descriptive entry points for beginning researchers to start exploring topics while not overwhelming them with information.—Amanda Babirad, Instructional Services Librarian, Morrisville State College, Morrisville, New York