Ripe

Praise for Ripe

“It’s that time of year—our hopes for the garden expressed in our nostalgia for the perfect tomato. In the end, Arthur Allen breaks it to us gently, there’s no such thing. It exists somewhere in our collective American imagination—just as the French dream of the perfect bread and the Italians dream of olive oil as it was when they were children. ‘If we reach our destination,’ Allen quotes one of his sources, ‘we’ll have nothing to do and nowhere to go. We never really want to get there!’ Allen takes us on a romp through every variety; every texture and flavor, every existing genetic combination. In the end, he has a better understanding of the great difference between gardening and agriculture. It’s one thing to dream of a flavor, another to re–create it for the masses.” —Los Angeles Times

“A robust tale of how tomatoes get to the table and why some don’t taste very good when they get there. For the denizens of the northern portions of the East Coast outside the growing season, writes former AP foreign correspondent Allen, tomatoes mean the round red things grown in Florida. More precisely: “Roughly 85 percent of the areas east of the Mississippi were served by Florida tomatoes in the October–June months, with about the same percentage in the West buying Mexican products.” Lucky Westerners: Tomatoes from Mexico still taste something like tomatoes, and a small army of plant scientists and agronomists from all over the world have descended on the country to keep the supply coming. Poor Easterners: Tomatoes grown there are “flawed” save for one thing—they fit a fast–food hamburger bun perfectly, and even if they have no taste, they are big and firm and can be sliced quickly by a machine without being turned to pulp. Implicated in that fast–food maw are issues of food justice, about which Allen writes from an unusual firsthand perspective. He ventured into the fields and picked tomatoes with immigrant workers, coming in with about half their yield owing to his inexperience but netting the same amount of pay, with a champion picker earning about $70 for a load of tomatoes that would likely bring $360 in a grocery store. Not a bad profit for an industry supported by such corporate types as “a mild–mannered flak who produced reassuring explanations for why a socially responsible company like Burger King couldn’t pay a bit more for its tomatoes.” Ultimately, Allen suggests, the factory system will endure alongside the boutique, heirloom, organic–garden variety of tomato production, with perfection not likely coming from the former.
An eye–opener for foodies, consumers and social–justice activists alike.” —Kirkus

Praise for the author’s previous book, Vaccine

“Timely, fair–minded and crisply written.” —The New York Times

“This compelling narrative of the vaccine’s undoubted triumphs and troubling challenges is highly recommended.” —Library Journal

“Allen deftly maneuvers as he wrangles myriad aspects of a very complicated issue into a comprehensible text.” —Booklist

“Allen adroitly chronicles . . . describing the science and serendipity behind each breakthrough and breathing life into the researchers who achieved them.” —The Wall Street Journal