Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is on a mission to tackle one of the most stubborn health problems in the country: chronic disease in the African American community.

African Americans are heavier and sicker than any other group in the U.S., with nearly half of all Black adults suffering from some form of cardiovascular disease. After Adams woke up with severe vision loss one day in 2016, he learned that he was one of the nearly 5 million Black people living with diabetes-and, according to his doctor, he would have it for the rest of his life.

A police officer for more than two decades, Adams was a connoisseur of the fast-food dollar menu. Like so many Americans with stressful jobs, the last thing he wanted to think about was eating healthfully. Fast food was easy, cheap, and comfortable. His diet followed him from the squad car to the state senate, and then to Brooklyn Borough Hall, where it finally caught up with him.

But Adams was not ready to become a statistic. There was a better option besides medication and shots of insulin: food. Within three months of adopting a plant-based diet, he lost 35 pounds, lowered his cholesterol by 30 points, restored his vision, and reversed his diabetes. Now he is on a mission to revolutionize the health of not just the borough of Brooklyn, but of African Americans across the country.

Armed with the hard science and real-life stories of those who have transformed their bodies by changing their diet, Adams shares the key steps for a healthy, active life. With this book, he shows readers how to avoid processed foods, cut down on salt, get more fiber, and substitute beef, chicken, pork, and dairy with delicious plant-based alternatives. In the process he explores the origins of soul food-a cuisine deeply important to the Black community, but also one rooted in the horrors of slavery-and how it can be reimagined with healthy alternatives.

Features more than 50 recipes from celebrities and health experts, including Paul McCartney, Queen Afua, Jenné Claiborne, Bryant Jennings, Charity Morgan, Moby, and more!

The journey to good health begins in the kitchen-not the hospital bed!

When Bucky McGuire travels by wagon train to his new home, he learns life lessons about family, love, faith, and hope.

Eleven-year-old Bucky McGuire climbs aboard his family’s covered wagon and heads west in 1877. Wrapped in buffalo robes, young Bucky watches the new world unfurl before him and dreams of the possibilities of frontier life in post–Civil War Illinois.

Bucky soon learns he will need every ounce of his considerable grit and good-heartedness to assist the McGuire clan in taming their new surroundings. There are crops to protect from a biblical plague of locusts, a cowboy posse to join when a fierce blizzard threatens a herd of cattle, and wayward children to rescue from an abandoned mine shaft. To say nothing of the risks posed by the smile of a pretty girl at the church social . . .

As his adventures unfold, Bucky will discover that anything is possible with the help of a strong horse, a loyal dog, and the love of a good family.