The book’s description on amazon is as follows:

“This narrative begins with the term’s coining in 1944, and moves on to chart the rise of factory farming and the fast food industry. With the emergence of 1960s counterculture, vegetarianism and then later veganism came out of the fringes to gain mainstream acceptance. And as the modern animal rights movement grew into maturity between 1990 and 2010, the dismantlement of factory farming has become inevitable.”

“Like no book before, A Vegan History puts the modern vegetarian movement and its push to topple industrialized animal agribusiness into context.”

If you haven’t been a long-term active member of the movement, this book is a must-read. It’s a good primer on the influential people and things of the modern vegan movement. And even if you have been involved for years and years, reading this book is still probably a good idea because it may fill in some gaps in your knowledge of vegan history. Because it’s such a short book at such a reasonable price (currently it’s selling for $2.99), I recommend this book for anyone interested in veganism, particularly anyone interested in activism and advocacy.

That said, there was one major flaw of the book: The focus of the book is almost entirely on written works such as books and pamphlets (and their authors, who are almost always white men). Clearly, these items are the easiest to track down, compile into a timeline, and then weave into a story. And there’s certainly a place for that story. However, A Vegan History is an incomplete tale.

Included: Donald Watson, H. Jay Dinshah, Peter Singer, John Robbins, Mark Bittman, Wayne Pacelle, Henry Spira, Jack Norris, Matt Ball, Nick Cooney, and more.
Not included: Ingrid Newkirk (although PETA is mentioned), Nathan Runkle (however, MFA is included), Lee Hall, Steve Best, Gary Francione, and others. Most importantly, the hard-working individuals who did the majority of the real work in vegan advocacy are refered to seldomly and only as “volunteers” or “activists” for a specific campaign or organization.

Only one musical group was mentioned, The Smiths, and only two television shows, Oprah and Ellen. Paul McCartney is mentioned, but only as a “celebrity” not as a muscian or artist. Heather Mills didn’t receive the title “celebrity”; instead, she was introduced as the second ex-wife of Paul McCartney. Her modeling career, amputee-rights activism, and self-earned celebrity status didn’t get a mention. Talk about a HIStory.

The woman who receives the most attention in Marcus’ book is Frances More Lappe, author of Diet for a Small Planet. Marcus wrote, “For all its favorable impact, Diet for a Small Planet also put an albatross around the neck of the vegetarian movement.” He then goes on to detail her mistake about protein. (If you don’t know what mistake I’m talking about here, please just read Marcus’s ebook.) In my opinion, Marcus is unfairly harsh on Lappe. Nutrition is a young science and mistakes are inevitable. I’m certain that 40 years from now the expert opinions on things like B12, vitamin D, and Omega 3s will be different than they are today. In fact, some of what Marcus himself writes today about nutrition will almost certainly be proven wrong some time in the future. Luckily, the human body is very resiliant and can survive a wide variety of diets, all the more reason to choose a diet that doesn’t cause harm to others.

Perhaps due to a teeny bit of bias because I am a vegan blogger, I believe the greatest omission of A Vegan History was The Web. In my opinion, the best equalizer of our time and also one of the most effective tools for animal advocacy is The Web. But Marcus makes nary a mention of the role that bloggers and web activists have played in the advancement of veganism. Which was strange, given how much time Marcus spends on his own blog asking readers to use social media to promote veganism. Maybe he’s saving that discussion for a companion follow-up book, Another Vegan History.

One can dream.

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To buy A Vegan History, please click here >>

The praise already given to this book describes it accurately:

“If we want to create a more compassionate world, we need to understand what motivates people to make compassionate choices. Change of Heart provides fresh, research based insight into how non-profits and individuals can more effectively create social change through a better understanding of the human mind.” – Gene Baur, Director, Farm Sanctuary

The book is a well-written and well-researched piece that belongs in the animal advocate’s canon alongside Striking At The Roots and The Animal Activist’s Handbook. The book is packed with scientific evidence that suggests particular strategies are more effective than others at producing societal shifts in regards to animal rights, human rights, and environmentalism.

Here’s a snippet from the book to give you a taste of what I mean. This comes from chapter four ”Tools of Influence, Part I: Simple Tools”:

“Seeing a running meter of something—for example, the cost of a cab ride rising and rising, or calories burning off one by one on a digital counter while we exercise—has more of an impact than simply hearing the final price or number of calories burned. The Wattson, a popular item in the U.K., is a small device that displays in real time the amount of energy being used by a household and how much that energy is costing. Similar devices for sale in the U.S. show the electricity use and cost of individual appliances in real time. Watching the cost rise minute by minute can be a powerful motivator to lower energy consumption; the Wattson’s creators claim the device cuts household energy usage by five to twenty-five percent simply by providing immediate feedback to home-owners.”

“Providing positive feedback on behavioral change that’s already taken place can help increase that behavior. For example, signs posted on recycling containers that proudly mentioned how many cans had been collected the previous week increased subsequent recycling totals by sixty-five percent (Larson et al. 1995). In another study, households that were mailed letters about their reduced energy usage and financial savings subsequently decreased usage by another five percent, whereas a control group that didn’t receive a letter actually increased their usage (Seligman and Darley 1977). Similarly, households in one town that got feedback on the number of pounds of materials they were recycling each week subsequently increased the amount of material they recycled by twenty-six percent (DeLeon and Fuqua 1995).”

For animal advocates who promote veganism, a similar concept could be used. For example, Eric Markus talks about “becoming an animal millionaire” wherein he means sparing ONE MILLION animals from lives full of suffering and painful death by becoming a vegan and then helping others become vegan too:

 ”All you need to do is to get about 500 young people to switch to a vegetarian or vegan diet.  Since each 20-year-old will likely eat another 2000 chickens and other farmed animals over the course of his or her life, that works out to about a million animals for every 500 young people who change their diets.” – Eric Markus

Ideas like this one will spring into your head as you read Change of Heart. You’ll nod in agreement when a passage you read confirms your intuition or your own behavior. You’ll cringe at some of the sneaky salesman tricks marketers have used and wonder if there’s a more honest use for that information. And you’ll wonder how little is really known in the fields of psychology and sociology.

A couple caveats:

All of the above simply mean that people who are interested in effective animal advocacy ought to spend significantly more time and energy studying how to be effective. There’s a lot to be learned in this area and if we’re serious, we should take to the task as though we were doctoral candidates in the subject. That is, we should do more research!

If Change of Heart interests you, then you might also consider reading:

Have you read anything good lately?

There are a couple of pluses about online book clubs:

* you don’t have to arrive at a particular time and place, book completely read, to discuss. You can dip into the discussion at midnight from home, if you like. I suspect it will be possible to continue the discussion of a particular book past its specific month, as well, although you may not get as many responses to your comments.

* you can read others’ comments and think before adding your own, or go back to reread part of the book.

And a book club about vegetarianism and animal rights? How rare is that?

“Vegan kids especially need books that affirm their values and allow them to explore issues around human-animal relations that most cultural artifacts — and other children in your vegan child’s world — tend to overlook.  Books are one way adults can support the vegan children in their lives while creating opportunities to spend time together.  Here are a few titles to get you started. “

Read their list here >>

After you check out their list, perhaps you’ll want to browse the children’s section in our Amazon store >>

Right now they’re doing a poll to decide which book to read. The poll choices themselves make a pretty comprehensive list of vegan-related reading material. With or without the help of a book club, these books should probably find their way onto the bookshelves of anyone seriously interested in veganism or animal rights. There’s even one or two books about nutrition:

• Animal Liberation by Peter Singer
• The Dreaded Comparison Human and Animal Slavery by Marjorie Spiegel
• Babies and Beasts: The Argument From Marginal Cases by Daniel A. Dombrowski
• Introduction to Animal Rights Your Child or the Dog? by Gary L. Francione
• Thanking the Monkey Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals by Karen Dawn
• Eternal Treblinka Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust by Charles Patterson
• For the Prevention of Cruelty The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States by Diane L. Beers
• Between the Species A Reader in Human-Animal Relationships by Arnold Arluke
• Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Ethics and the Beast A Speciesist Argument for Animal Liberation by  Tzachi Zamir
• Making a Killing The Political Economy of Animal Rights by Bob Torres
• Strategic Action for Animals A Handbook on Strategic Movement Building, Organizing, and Activism for Animal Liberation by Melanie Joy
• The Way We Eat Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer
• Sins of the Flesh A History of Ethical Vegetarian Thought by Rod Preece
• The Animal Activists Handbook Maximizing Our Positive Impact in Today’s World by Matt Ball
• Dominion The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew Scully
• The Face on Your Plate The Truth About Food by J. Moussaieff Masson
• Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian
• When Elephants Weep The Emotional Lives of Animals by J. Moussaieff Masson
• Vegetarian America A History by Karen Iacobbo
• Living Among Meat Eaters The Vegetarian’s Survival Handbook by Carol J. Adams
• The Heretic’s Feast A History of Vegetarianism by Colin Spencer
• Being Vegan by Joanne Stepaniak
• An Unnatural Order Uncovering the Roots of Our Domination of Nature and Each Other by Jim Mason
• Diet for a New America How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness and the Future of Life on Earth by John Robbins
• Religious Vegetarianism From Hesiod to the Dalai Lama by Lisa Portmess
• Why Animals Matter The Case for Animal Protection by Erin E. Williams
• Ethical Vegetarianism From Pythagoras to Peter Singer by Kerry S. Walters
• The Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan
• Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals by Anthony J. Nocella II
• May All Be Fed ‘a Diet For A New World Including Recipes By Jia Patton And Friends by John Robbins
• Animal Rights/Human Rights by David Nibert
• Rain Without Thunder The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement by Gary L. Francione
• Animals as Persons Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation by Gary L. Francione
• Why Animal Suffering Matters Philosophy, Theology, and Practical Ethics by Andrew Linzey
• 101 Reasons Why I’m A Vegetarian by Pamela Rice
• Vegan Freak Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World by Bob Torres
• The China Study The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health by T. Colin Campbell
• Capers in the Churchyard Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror by Lee Hall
• Slaughterhouse The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, And Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.s. Meat Industry by Gail A. Eisnitz
• Animals, Property, and the Law (Ethics and Action) by Gary L. Francione
• Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows An Introduction to Carnism by Melanie Joy