Within Our Grasp

"An important, hopeful book that looks at the urgent problem of childhood malnutrition worldwide and the revolutionary progress being made to end it. From the much-admired writer of luminous prose and humane heart, winner of the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished nature writing. A healthy Earth requires healthy children. Yet nearly one fourth of the world's children--one in four--are stunted physically and mentally due to a lack of food or nutrients. These children do not die but endure a lifetime of diminished potential. In the past thirty years, writes Sharman Russell in Within Our Grasp, we have seen a revolution in how we treat these sick children, and how, with a new understanding of the human body and approach to nutrition, along with new ways to reach out to hungry mothers and babies, we have gone from unwittingly killing the severely malnourished child to bringing him/her back to health through a "miracle" ready-to-eat therapeutic food. Intertwined with stories of scientists and nutrition experts on the front lines of finding a means of putting an end to malnutrition for good, Russell writes of her travels to Malawi, one of the poorest and least-developed countries in t