Rating: 
Summary: Poorly Written and One Sided
Review: The thing that bothered me about this book is that it presents veganism like some sort of magical cure to all your health problems. For example: it doesn't say that you could get Methionine deficiency. It should say what kind of vitamins, minerals, amino acids you might be missing when going on a vegan diet, and how you should compensate for that. The nutritional information was rather marginal. The descriptions of farms could be more descriptive and longer. The chapter about world hunger rambles about rising world population - there is one line where it says that hunger is not caused by a shortage of food, but by poverty. Who is going to remember that line in all that rambling? If hunger is caused by poverty not a shortage of food, why does the book emphasize rising population? Then the book goes on to say that grazing cattle destroy the land, however in the earlier chapter it says that cattle stay in crates eating protein. That certainly made no sense to me. The book is all over the place. The layout of the book is horrible, double spaced - writing is indented so it covers half the page. If the author is so concerned about saving the environment, why did they use half the page? Also the biographies on the side are pretty annoying. The book should be called biographies of vegan activists, because half the time it talks about people - perhaps using a propaganda technique in addition to scientific information. It seems like a book for people who hate reading. The book is very short and lacks information. It could be a lot more in depth. It doesn't say that poor immigrants also harvest plants. It doesn't say that animal by-products are used in many everyday items. It doesn't say that plant agriculture also destroys the environment with all their pesticides, and destroys genetic diversity with GM foods. The book should talk about all those things, if it doesn't it looks like a one-sided book. I must admit sadly that this book was the final piece of writing that convinced me to become a vegan. It had some good points. A diet of meat puts you at war with animals, your body, and the environment. However, the book should also mention that there is vegan food that is loaded with saturated fat, and that all agriculture is somewhat destructive to the environment. It doesn't say that things like soy aren't exactly the most healthiest things in the world. The book had some good points, but it is totally ruined because it is so shallow, poorly-written, annoying, and one sided. It could have been a much better. Just because you're a vegan doesn't mean you should stop being critical of a pro-vegan work of literature.
Rating:
Summary: Oddly Titled
Review: This book is a collection of arguments against eating animal products. It is organized into 3 sections: human health, animal welfare, and the environment. The book is illustrated with high-quality black-and-white photographs. End material includes a description of vegan food groups, a list of organizations devoted to topics discussed in the book, and a list of suggested readings. Sources are cited with endnotes, and there is an index.
The health section, which goes on for 90 pages, isn't about ethics at all. Instead, it enumerates various health problems and how avoiding animal products can help reduce the risk of developing these problems. We read about how vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease, cancer, obesity, and Creuztfeldt-Jakob disease (mad cow disease), and also how dairy products are over-rated as health foods. The book makes it sound as if adopting a vegan diet is a great way to prevent both heart disease and cancer, but since these are the two leading causes of death in the US, and even vegans have to die of something, what do they die of, if not heart disease or cancer?
The section about animals is the one most closely related to ethics. In this section are chapters describing the horrors of factory farms for chickens, swine, and cattle, as well as farm workers. Many stories in this section are drawn from the mission work of Gene and Lorri Bauston who visit factory farms and rescue abused animals. They take the sick and injured animals home to their Farm Sanctuary, name them, and let them run around unexploited for the remainder of their natural lives.
The final section of the book discusses big picture topics, such as world hunger, and how vegetables can be produced so much more efficiently than animal products. It also describes the harm that range animals do to their environment. It concludes with a short chapter about why Marcus himself became a vegan.
I was a vegetarian for 20 years, but my doctor, a naturopathic physician, has advised me that my body needs at least some meat now and then. I'm concerned about the ethics of including a little meat in my diet, but I didn't find much in here that was new. Descriptions of the horrors of factory farming are much more detailed and convincing in books such as Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser) or Spoiled (Nichols Fox). Actually, Marcus's arguments are mainly against consuming the products of factory farms, not against the complete avoidance of all animal products as practiced by vegans. After learning about the horrid conditions of factory chickens and the unhealthy eggs they produce from Schlosser and Fox's books, I have switched to eating only local eggs from free-range chickens kept by a neighbor. I also have a policy of never eating meat grown by a stranger- -if I must eat meat, I want to be able to look the animal in the eyes and know that it was healthy and treated humanely up to the point of its death in the slaughterhouse, a local facility, run by local workers who have received proper safety training. I was looking for arguments against or advice about using animal products from even small farms, but didn't find much here.
The layout and formatting of the book are cutesy. Rather than make the text easy on the reader's eyes, the designer played with creative ideas for making the appearance of the text interesting. Phrases are bolded at random throughout the book. On about a third to a half of the pages, the text doesn't end flush with the margin, but rather in a concave arc. Scattered throughout the book are short focus articles presenting biographies of people discussed in the text. These articles are set off from the main text in half columns, but always arranged so that there is a page turn in the middle of the article, guaranteeing that the reader will either have to turn back and forth to read the main text or the focus article consecutively, or else read both texts all on one page, and remember each topic separately while turning the page to resume each topic. Ugh! The layout designer obviously doesn't like to read! Overall, though interested in the topic, I found the book rather disappointing both in content and readability.
Rating: 
Summary: Informative and easy to read
Review: This book is easy to read and highly informative. I think it is appealing to meat-eaters as well as veteran vegans. I have seen Erik Marcus speak, and he is truly passionate about veganism, and he wrote this book because he believes that veganism can help make the world a better place. He's right! Great book.
Rating: 
Summary: Vegans rock and this book makes you proud of it.
Review: This book is really awesome, especially for a person who is interested in becoming a vegan. If everyone read this book they would think twice about what they stick in their mouths. Animal liberation!!!! Eight billion are killed every year in the U.S. E-mail me fellow vegans!!
Rating:
Summary: So you want to be a vegan
Review: This book will not tell you the hows, but it certainly will tell you the whys. "Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating" is split into three sections: the health reasons, the abuse food animals endure, and the devastating effect animal "agriculture" has on our planet.In detailing health reasons, Marcus talks with Drs. Dean Ornish and Terry Shintani, who devised near-vegan diets for patients and met with success. Ornish's trials have shown actual reversal of heart disease with his low-fat, near-vegan diet. Shintani created the Eat More Index, based on the theory that humans need three to four pounds of food a day, and approximately 2,500 calories. He determined how many pounds of food would be 2,500 calories. Most vegetable products (nuts, oils and avocadoes excluded) were remarkably high, while animal products were nightmarishly low. He theorized that people weren't eating too much, but eating the wrong foods. This section also details the mad cow epidemic in Great Britain and the government's blind eye to the problem. Howard Lyman, whose appearance on Oprah Winfrey's show sparked a lawsuit, also shows up. The second section deals with the horrors so-called food animals endure on the factory farm and the efforts of one couple, Gene and Lorri Bauston, to help them. The Baustons started Farm Sanctuary, which has facilities in Watkins Glen, New York, and Orland, California, for the purpose of housing animals who have been rescued from appalling conditions, including the "dead piles" at auctions. Featured throughout this section are photos of animals they've rescued and their stories, some of which are heartbreaking. Perhaps the worst part of it, as Gene Bauston points out, is not one death is necessary because we do not need milk, eggs, or meat to survive. The third section details the environmental destruction that meat production causes, along with the population explosion. Large companies are allowed to use public rangelands very cheaply--essentially corporate welfare--and they also kill thousands of wild animals who set foot on their property. Intense factory farming also wastes millions of gallons of water every year--what it doesn't pollute, that is. If you want to do your part to make this world a better place, get this book. Then go vegan.
Rating:
Summary: So you want to be a vegan
Review: This book will not tell you the hows, but it certainly will tell you the whys. "Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating" is split into three sections: the health reasons, the abuse food animals endure, and the devastating effect animal "agriculture" has on our planet. In detailing health reasons, Marcus talks with Drs. Dean Ornish and Terry Shintani, who devised near-vegan diets for patients and met with success. Ornish's trials have shown actual reversal of heart disease with his low-fat, near-vegan diet. Shintani created the Eat More Index, based on the theory that humans need three to four pounds of food a day, and approximately 2,500 calories. He determined how many pounds of food would be 2,500 calories. Most vegetable products (nuts, oils and avocadoes excluded) were remarkably high, while animal products were nightmarishly low. He theorized that people weren't eating too much, but eating the wrong foods. This section also details the mad cow epidemic in Great Britain and the government's blind eye to the problem. Howard Lyman, whose appearance on Oprah Winfrey's show sparked a lawsuit, also shows up. The second section deals with the horrors so-called food animals endure on the factory farm and the efforts of one couple, Gene and Lorri Bauston, to help them. The Baustons started Farm Sanctuary, which has facilities in Watkins Glen, New York, and Orland, California, for the purpose of housing animals who have been rescued from appalling conditions, including the "dead piles" at auctions. Featured throughout this section are photos of animals they've rescued and their stories, some of which are heartbreaking. Perhaps the worst part of it, as Gene Bauston points out, is not one death is necessary because we do not need milk, eggs, or meat to survive. The third section details the environmental destruction that meat production causes, along with the population explosion. Large companies are allowed to use public rangelands very cheaply--essentially corporate welfare--and they also kill thousands of wild animals who set foot on their property. Intense factory farming also wastes millions of gallons of water every year--what it doesn't pollute, that is. If you want to do your part to make this world a better place, get this book. Then go vegan.
Rating:
Summary: Better Done Elsewhere
Review: This is a competent, though hardly invigorating, book about veganism. It is more of a People Magazine look at it, consisting as it does of brief chapters that are vaguely interesting but much more hero-worship of vegan "stars" than true insight into the issues. It is a shame, because what he says is very good. But focusing on individuals does not accomplish what he intends, and makes me feel as if I've traded the cult of meat for the cult of celebrity.
Rating:
Summary: Hooray for Responsible Eaters!
Review: This is a fantastic book that gives a persuasive case for vegetarianism. The only books out there that are better are Kerry Walters's Ethical Vegetarianism from Pythagoras to Peter Singer and Mary Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet. You can quit eating meat for health reasons, but the bottom line is that carnivorism inflicts suffering and death on innocent creatures. Read Marcus, Walters, Lappe, and others, and go veggie!
Rating:
Summary: Very comprehensive on all the reasons to go vegan!
Review: This is a great book! Erik Marcus presented the book at a local store, and was wonderful! Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating outlines the health, envinronmental, and compassionate reasons for living a life free of all animal products. I have eliminated dairy and eggs from my diet (the meat's been out long ago), and I feel great! And I love knowing that no animals suffer and die because of my diet.
Rating:
Summary: Why it is easy to avoid animal based food
Review: This is a great book. Packed with information how animal products determine our health and about industrial animal production. This book describes, that industrial animal production is not just abusing animals, it also about abusing the environment and humans. Particular the chapter about madcow disease makes this very clear. With this book it is really easy to become a vegan. Although I think, this is a vey useful book to rethink and change eating habits I missed one chapter: that one about fish, shrimps, and lobster farming or better production.
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