Very informative. Exceeded my expectations.
Very good.

I wasn't sure I was going to like this book when I first brought it home from the library. But, as I began to read it, I found it very engaging. Russell, has done quite a bit of research, and takes the broad sweep of hunger and interrelated topiscs, such as famine, fasting, weight loss, even getting into the religious aspects of this topic. ( )

A few weeks ago, I overheard an eight-year-old girl say to an adult in all seriousness, “I’m so hungry, I’m going to die!”

I couldn’t help thinking to myself that she had no idea what true hunger was; nor do I. In Hunger: An Unnatural History, Sharman Apt Russell details what it means, physiologically, to be hungry. Then she goes beyond the science of hunger and into the social aspects by reviewing the history of how we learned to help starving people recover and the various current worldwide issues surrounding hunger, from Anorexia Nervosa to refugees. It is an intriguing look into a social problem that everyone experiences, even to a small extent, every day.

I found Hunger to be a fascinating introduction to the subject. Russell’s book is best described, I believe, as an overview, neither focusing heavily on science nor on social issues. It’s very accessible and a quick read. I highly recommend it if such an overview is what you’re looking for.

More detailed review on my blog

Somehow, somewhere America's version of giving thanks became stuffing ourselves with food and then collapsing into an easy chair to watch football. Sharman Apt Russell's Hunger: An Unnatural History provides an excellent counterpoint to that mindset. Before you start backing away, this isn't book about famine in the third world (although that is unquestionably part of it). Instead, Hunger is a broad and wide-ranging exploration of and exposition on the subject, one that will make you think of hunger in ways you never have before.

Russell's unique approach begins at the outset. She starts from a simple proposition: "Hunger is a country we enter every day, like a commuter across a friendly border." She's right. Every day virtually every person, regardless of wealth, residence or social class, will feel their body tell them that it's hungry, that it needs fuel. Hunger is not limited to those who truly are starving.

Russell gradually expands her exploration by going through the various stages of hunger, whether it's a body that's gone a few hours or a day without food to those who are starving to death. Among other things, she examines the connection between hunger, albeit self-imposed via fasting, and religion. She basically broadens the common concept of hunger as simply a life-crushing experience and brings it into terms of everyday life and things everyone can understand.

Russell moves from the micro of the impact on the individual to the global, examining large scale famine and starvation and how they can be addressed. She looks at the personal, briefly recounting her experience with a fast she terminated after four days. She even looks at the obscene, or more accurately, how obscene events such as forced starvation imposed by the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto led the Jewish doctors there to gain scientific knowledge that remains valuable today.

Balance of review at http://prairieprogressive.com/2005/11/22/book-review-hunger-an-unnatural-history...