A thought provoking book indeed. Disclaimer, I'm a vegetarian, so the sequences about slaughter of nicely raised critters just provoked in my mind "really, you don't need to do that!". But fascinating details about the food plants of the Sonora desert region with passionate meanderings about the WTO, GMO, and so on. The author comes across as something of a fanatic prig, and I imagine I would not care to spend much time in his presence, but the book is worth reading and thinking about. It's 10 years old, but the debates are still quite current. ( )

The author tells a good story, bringing the characters to life, as he describes his year of eating locally. He would eat nothing for a year but that which was grown in his own locality - a difficult task, since he lives in the American southwest. His descriptions of growing, harvesting, and preparing food made me wince, even as I enjoyed the story. It brought home to me very starkly how much time our ancestors had to devote just to feeing themselves, leaving much less time for other things that might be considered equally important to some of us. A good entry in the slow food genre. ( )

Better books have come out on the topic since this was published. Nevertheless, it is a light read that touches on many of the environmentalist minded points about the relationship between food and place. ( )

This book was, simply put, a joy to read, a veritable cauldron of ideas explored and fleshed out for the reader. It may be because I lived for 8+ years in the same general areas as Nabhan that I can get a feel for what he is talking about more easily, but more likely than not, it is not that which endears Coming Home to Eat is that Coming Home is more of a philosophy than anything else and Nabhan's enthusiasm is certainly catching, though some of his methods and ways are not for everyone (eating road-kill for instance).

This book is really an intimate look at one man's passion for eating as locally as possible, a goal I have long thought of as a grand ideal but more and more, it is something I would very much like to do and while I don't have a great deal of knowledge about where exactly to start...reading Coming Home has really given my ideas wings. Nabhan certainly brings to the fore wide ranging topics, touching on the "health" of our food supply, genetically altered seeds, ect...and really brings home the interconnectivity of the local, regional, national and global food chains. What this book doesn't cover in depth, one can certainly get by reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Pollan and I can honestly say, having read both, I am a better person for it.

I plan to buy a copy of this for my permanent library and would heartily recommend it to anyone! It's well written and while one gets the sense that Nabhan is on a personal crusade, it's not preachy or elitist in any way. It almost reads like a novel and I would caution that Coming Home to Eat does NOT provide any type of resource for eating locally (as in a formula for doing so), but it DOES provide inspiration and some very cool laugh out loud moments. A+!! ( )

The writing is sometimes slow, and sometimes stiff, but sometimes beautiful or surprising. The real treasure is the content, where Nabhan describes the pleasures of eating locally, why it is important, and how that way of life is endangered. The book also contains excellent descriptions of ways to prepare traditional desert foods. ( )