The Man Who Fed the World: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlang and His Battle to End World Hunger

Winner of the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for the remarkable efforts begun 30 years earlier, and which continue to this day, agriculturalist Norman Borlaug most recently joined Jimmy Carter working in Africa and in recent years tackled successful projects in China. But his earliest claim to fame was his painstaking fieldwork in Mexico during the 1940s, when the prairie-raised Iowan developed strains of disease-resistant wheat, training local scientists to spread his breakthrough methods to other countries. Working over the years with the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, he was later responsible for averting famine in Pakistan and India, where hope for feeding their huge populations was almost nonexistent; characteristically, Borlaug maintained his sense of humility and wonder throughout: ""The enthusiasm everywhere bordered on mania. I have never seen anywhere in agriculture such euphoria...."" Author Hesser, an old friend and colleague of Borlaug, is well versed in the food production revolution that Borlaug helped create (encompassing wheat, rice and maize, and still branching out), and an able writer whose direct voice evokes the Midwest spirit of its subject.