Radical vegetarianism: A dialectic of diet and ethic

by Mark Mathew Braunstein

This is the vegetarian dialectic of diet and not coincidentally, but absolutely essentially, those foods that deprive the fewest lives of others contribute to the longest lives for ourselves. (from the preface)
Vegetarians are not a better sort of people, just a better sort of carnivore, writes Braunstein in Radical Vegetarianism, and carnivores are just a better sort of cannibal. In this updated edition of the 1981 classic, Braunstein courageously takes on the canned canards, sacred cows, and wooly thinking of carnivores and vegetarians alike, and proposes a vegetarianism that goes beyond the stereotypes of pot-lucks and Birkenstocks to one that embraces contradiction and candor, or, as Braunstein says (channeling the Ancients), Gnaw Thyself.


Nutrition in the Light of Vegetarianism
Ashes to Ashes, Life to Life
Letter to a Young Vegetarian
Traveling Fast
The Milky Way
Animals and Infidels
Carnivoral Death and Karmic Debt
The Illogic of the Ecologic
The Problem of Being a Flesh Eater
An Apologetic Addendum

Genres: Vegan, Health, Vegetarian, Philosophy, Animals

140 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Mark Mathew Braunstein's writer rap sheet includes six books, one praised by the Washington Post as “remarkably intelligent.” The diverse topics of his books and more than ninety ephemeral articles in glossy magazines include art, literature, holistic health, vegan vegetarianism, wildlife conservation, mobility disability, indoor gardening, cannabis culture, and drug law reform. His reader rap sheet includes the nearly entire oeuvres of way too many dead white males such as Melville and Thoreau, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Rilke and Kafka, Blake and Beckett, Plato and Epictetus, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, and his guru and mentor and doctor Seuss, to name some whose rhymes and rants he somehow survived while neither going crazy nor growing wise.

Painting himself into a corner as an abstract artist, he did time as an inmate of Manhattan until he made his prison break and bartered his brush for a pen. For the next quarter of a century, he was on the lam at a hideout in a wildlife refuge in Connecticut where deer did not flee him, where chickadees perched upon him, and where nocturnal wildlife parked themselves on his driveway. That nocturnal species of youthful female hominids engaged in mating rituals with random older males. The females inspired Braunstein to write a field guide about them, titled Good Girls on Bad Drugs.

As a paraplegic since 1990 and a Bad Boy on Good Drugs, his use of cannabis is medicinal for below the waist and recreational above. His 55 years as a pothead culminated in 2022 with the publication of his book, Mindful Marijuana Smoking: Health Tips for Cannabis Smokers.

While he has neither attained enlightenment nor seen god, he someday may look into the future and see you reading this GoodReads webpage, or reading his own at www.MarkBraunstein.ORG ("org" for organic, or whatever else may come to your mind)

Reviews

[Vegetarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book when I read it on a bus home from an annual NAVS Vegetarian Summerfest.

I did think he was a little skewed on some issues, but that doesn't keep me from liking Mark's book.

Mark Braunstein since suffered a very serious back injury, and many of us grieved for years about his loss of mobility (some still do).

But Mark's first contribution, _Radical Vegetarianism_, still stands.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poetic prose that introduced me to the ways of a plant based diet. Great

[Jack · Rating 1 out of 5]

Isn't it ironic to buy a book on vegetarianism and get nothing but baloney and hogwash? Intrigued by the promising title and cool cover ( a clenched fist made out of asparagus), I went ahead and bought it.

This book sucks. Really bad. Here and there are certain witty remarks, but they drown in an endless diarrhea of "gee-I-would-so-like-to-be-fun-and-provocative".

It is a complete junk yard of disinformation, deranged ramblings about religion and dangerously unscientific crap that nobody should ever read.

There are SO many excellent vegan writers out there, so do yourself a favor and look elsewhere. (Tuttle, Adams, Stepaniak to name a few).