Eighteen months ago I read a book that changed my life. Yeah, yeah, I know… sounds corny. But it’s not what you think. This book changed my life not because of what it said, but because of what it didn’t say.

On a nothing-special summer afternoon in 2010, I sat in the Cambridge Public Library preparing a speech on something I’d been studying for decades. I plugged “world hunger” into the library’s computer.

Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know popped up.

Perfect, I thought. I knew I would have differences with the book because I’d just read a critique of the views of its author, Robert Paarlberg, by my daughter Anna Lappe on the Foreign Policy website. But I’m always eager to know how those with whom I disagree make their case. Noticing that

Food Politics was published by Oxford University Press, I felt confident I could count on it being a credibly argued and sourced counterpoint.

So I began reading.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes” doesn’t do justice to the shock I experienced.

The book’s subtitle suggests coverage of essential food issues and its back cover indicates

Food Politics is not just another example of “conflicting claims and accusations from advocates,” but rather “maps this contested terrain.” Yet, I was finding only one piece of the “map” with key issues at the center of the global food debate omitted altogether. But what was jaw-dropping for me was that

Food Politics lacked any citations for the book’s many startling claims.

What? Why would the gold standard of academic presses, Oxford
University Press, release such a work and misleadingly promote it, to
boot? The UK Oxford University Press website says that “all books are referred to them [the Delegates, i.e., selected faculty of the university] for approval.” The Press’ USA website stresses its peer review process.

But how, I wondered, could a book on any serious topic be evaluated in the absence of citations?

I soon learned that Oxford University Press had published other books on vital public concerns, including nuclear power, with no citations. Hmm, I thought, even high school students are required to provide sources.

Then I got to the author’s defense of Monsanto. He cites the
“political stigma” that has been attached to GMOs, which “dried up
investment” in GMOs in Europe, as a reason that the company now
dominates the industry.