And if we heed him, those conversations will not only be better informed, but might even lead to a better democracy.” -Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing More important, Stan Cox gives us the tools to talk about rationing sensibly. From death panels to water wars, Any Way You Slice It explains with wit and sophistication how rationing happens. In fact, we do it every day and our reluctance to admit it serves us poorly. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. “Today, rationing is about as acceptable a topic of conversation as hemorrhoids. In this richly informative and deeply courageous book, he tackles one of the greatest taboos of our high-consumer culture: the need to consume less and to fairly share what’s left.” -Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine “An iconoclast of the best kind, Stan Cox has an all-too-rare commitment to following arguments wherever they lead, however politically dangerous that turns out to be. Orr, Paul Sears Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics, Oberlin College a brilliant opening of a global dialogue on who gets what, when, why, and how.” -David W. “A cool and cogent analysis of a taboo subject. The author of Losing Our Cool, the much-debated and widely acclaimed examination of air-conditioning’s many impacts, here turns his attention to the politically explosive topic of how we share our planet’s resources. And in this provocative and thoughtful book Cox asks: can we limit consumption while assuring everyone a fair share? Any Way You Slice It takes us on a fascinating search for alternative ways of apportioning life’s necessities, from the wartime goal of “fair shares for all” in the 1940s to present-day water rationing in a Mumbai slum, from the bread shops of Cairo to the struggle for fairness in American medicine and carbon rationing on Norfolk Island in the Pacific. Instead, he persuasively argues that how we ration is a crucial issue in our fragile present, an era of dwindling resources and environmental crises. In Any Way You Slice It, Stan Cox shows that fair-shares rationing is not just a quaint practice restricted to World War II memoirs and stories of gas-station lines in the 1970s.

As Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen has said, the results can be “thoroughly unequal and nasty.” Health care expert Henry Aaron has compared mentioning the possibility of rationing to “shouting an obscenity in church.” Yet societies ration food, water, medical care, and fuel all the time, with those who can pay the most getting the most. Rationing: it’s a word-and idea-that people seem to fear and hate in equal measure.

Any way you slice it you are amazing