The New Breadline

Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century

By: Jean-Martin Bauer

Narrated by: Jean-Martin Bauer

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • WINNER OF THE 2025 ZÓCALO BOOK PRIZE

A humanitarian leader with more than two decades of experience working for the United Nations takes aim at the global food crisis—revealing how hunger anywhere affects lives everywhere and what steps we can take to change course.

"This book should be required reading for the entire human race."
—Jonathan Safran Foer, author of We Are the Weather

At the turn of the twenty-first century, more than 150 countries pledged to eradicate hunger by 2030. But with only a few years left, we’re far from reaching that goal. Instead, hunger is on the rise—America itself recently experienced levels of food insecurity not seen since the Great Depression. How could the richest nation in the world have so many people going hungry?

In The New Breadline, aid worker and activist Jean-Martin Bauer unravels this paradox. Bauer’s family fled to America during the terrors of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. Now on the brink of mass starvation, Haiti and its grim history inspired Bauer to make food justice his life's work. During his long career with the UN, Bauer learned firsthand that the problem of hunger is always political—and like all political conditions, hunger, he knew, was something we could work to change.

Drawing from his fieldwork in the most hunger-prone countries across the globe—from Haiti, where elites hoard imported French cheese, to Madagascar, where foreign corporations are snatching up valuable land from local farmers, to right here in America, where the lines at food banks continue to grow—Bauer weaves profound personal insight with a keen understanding of the structural systems of racism, classism, and sexism that thwart true progress in the battle against hunger. The New Breadline is an inspiring call to action to end what he persuasively argues is one of the greatest threats to our society, boldly envisioning a world where we can always feed ourselves and one another.

Modern Solutions and perspectives in humanity's greatest fight.

Such an amazing tale of events, captivating and truly capturing the challenges and opportunities in the great fight against hunger. This well- written work vividly depicts the true realities with great facts - showing what some may consider a small grain of sand in a colossal machine, yet can still have devastating impacts. A strongly recommended read.

A brilliant book on hunger reasons and solutions

A brilliant insight on global food supply systems closely studying hunger in the 21st century, mentally mapping the historical reasons and recommending solutions for future individual and social impact.