This book investigates the emergence of organic food and farming as a social movement, tracing it back to its roots in the 1930s and following it right through to the modern day. As the author states, it is not about organic agriculture as such, but about the people and ideas that helped shape the organic agriculture movement. The style is very open and modern and this, coupled with its relatively short length, makes it very accessible and easy to read.

At the outset the book states that it is not striving to be an encyclopaedia of the global development of the organic movement. Rightly, the book focuses on key characters and issues that help illustrate the social movement concept (for example Eve Balfour). The book does though at times have the feel of being a series of interesting vignettes and the choice of these vignettes means the global claim in the title of the book could be challenged. This said, overall the author successfully manages the tricky task of making it all hang together. The chapter on social movements is particularly good, as it provides a succinct introduction to the concepts and a useful primer for the following analysis of organic agriculture. One slight oddity in the book was the rather random use of boxes in the text (in terms of content and use in chapters). This small issue aside, the book is very interesting and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the development of social movements in general and the organic food and farming movement in particular.