Frances Moore Lappé

Frances Moore Lappé is a food-systems thinker and American author whose work connects eating habits with hunger, ecology, and democratic participation. Hope’s Edge revisits the questions raised by Diet for a Small Planet through a journey undertaken with her daughter and coauthor, Anna Lappé. Traveling across five continents, they profile communities working on food, farming, economic fairness, and environmental renewal, then pair those reports with nearly seventy plant-based recipes from cooks including Alice Waters, Mollie Katzen, and Anna Thomas. Tarcher published the paperback edition in 2003. The book belongs to a career that began with Lappé's influential 1971 study of diet and resource use and continued through writing and institution-building. She co-founded Food First and later the Small Planet Institute, which she leads with Anna. In Hope’s Edge, reporting, family collaboration, and practical cooking serve the same purpose: showing how large systems become visible through everyday choices and locally organized responses.