The Ultimate Vegan Guide: Compassionate Living Without Sacrifice (Second Edition)

Like a vegan big brother, Erik Marcus guides any new vegan (or nearly vegan) with sensible and honest how-to advice - and only the occasional noogie. Marcus gives readers the tried and true, including shopping advice, basic nutrition, what to cook, dining out, and explaining your ethics to family and spouses. It's written in a casual style so it's accessible and intentionally nonconfrontational; if you're looking for an ideology-laden book that helps justify your choices to someone else, keep looking. Meat-eaters will find little to offend them in this book, which is mercifully light on the grisly details of animal suffering (plenty of other books and films accomplish this well). I do have some minor quibbles. Some of his advice verges on simplistic - for example, travel and dining out can be more of a challenge than he acknowledges. His suggestions for activism are also somewhat simplistic. Unfortunately there is too little discussion of avoiding animal products in clothing, which is a valid concern for new vegans, nor does he mention avoiding animal entertainment like circuses or sea life theme parks. As above, there are other books and films where these issues are addressed fully, but it would have been nice to see some more attention paid here and possibly some resources. Nonetheless, it's hard to imagine a better jumping-off point for someone interested in investing themselves more deeply in a vegan lifestyle.

I bought this book for my 18-yr-old niece who has been a vegetarian her whole life but whose family isn't...she LOVES this book and it makes her feel like there are many others out there like her...and she says the book has answered so many of her questions...

I love the approach on veganism taken with this book. It's mixed with lighter talk, more practical advice and the author's personal experiences than I've seen in his previous titles, which were excellent in their own right for different reasons. In short, The Ultimate Vegan Guide is very accessible to those who don't like to be 'lectured' about the way they eat (i.e. those who might still be eating meat and dairy), but want to know more about plant-based eating in a fun way without "sacrificing" their lifestyle.

Hoped this book would be as good as Erik Marcus's vegan.com generous podcast series on going vegan would be and am glad to find it certainly is. A highly readable, sensible, critical and practical guide to going vegan and staying so. It has helped me make the transition this year.

The Ultimate Vegan Guide: Compassionate Living Without Sacrifice Three months ago I was attending a professional conference at a university campus when a young man handed me a booklet titled "Even If You like Meat .. You Can Help End This Cruelty" from Vegan Outreach. The booklet had pictures and stories of factory farming and the cruelty and suffering that the animals are put through so we can eat them. It also gave suggestions to eat other foods and go vegetarian. I have to say that I've enjoyed my chicken in all forms, bacon, ham and beef in every fashion imaginable. However, after reading the booklet and doing some simple research online I decided that I wouldn't eat meat, eggs or dairy if the animals had to suffer. My innocent meat eating,egg and milk beliefs were shattered. I guess I thought those happy cows in California that talk were real. I didn't know much real dairy cows were suffering. It gives me the shivers every time I think about pigs being dropped into boiling water while still alive. The screams are echoing in my thoughts like a distant nightmare. That was three months ago and I really wish that the Erik Marcus book "The Ultimate Vegan Guide" had been available as it would have saved me lots of money and time looking for information on how to get meat, dairy and eggs out of my diet. I bought and read "Becoming Vegan" by Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina but that book reads like a nutrition textbook full of scientific jargon and nutritional analysis. I felt frustrated on how to get started. There are lots of websites, but the information is scattered and often on a specific topic. Like coming in mid conversation. So I bought a bunch of vegan cook books - thinking maybe I could learn about being vegan that way. I wanted to get a good overview, what was this vegan thing all about, how do you get started, but the cook books only gave a few pages of intro and then listed ingredients and recipes, many of them with strange ingredients unfamiliar to me. The cook books assumed I had been vegan for years. How do I get started? Where do you get those ingredients and what if I don't have time to cook? Finally I found this book and it set me straight. It gives great advice on how to get started. It covers what being vegan is all about, what to do and what to avoid. Forget doing like I did and bookmarking over 100 different vegan websites. The author points out the best sites on the web. He takes his twenty years of being vegan and lays out a plan for beginners like me. He gives great suggestions on how and what food to buy, where to buy it, and what cook books (just two or three) to get started. How to eat vegan if you don't cook all the time, how to get adequate nutrition. And most important for me, all the justifications and logical reasons from health to reducing cruelty to phase into a vegan lifestyle. Erik Markus clearly explains what to do and why you would want to do so. He lays out a very sensible plan for adopting vegan eati