Is it difficult to live slowly? Is it just luck to be born into a community in which the production and consumption of clean and fair food is at the heart of its existence; a place where agricultural and culinary traditions are passed down and practiced?

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Slow Food movement was born in Italy. My generation has been imbued with this type of culture since birth because, until a few decades ago, we were essentially a nation of peasants. But something was broken, even here in Italy, when the industrialization of food caused us to look at this slow way of life as a legacy of the past, something to be forgotten, along with the poverty that accompanied it. Many people now look at the existence of these communities as something exotic, as if they were a curious anomaly that endures despite everything else in our fast moving world. The risk is to react like colonialists struggling with the natives who they wanted to educate: burn everything.

Today, however, Terra Madre—the vast network of communities created by Slow Food—teaches us that in this "old" way of living, with its myriad of rituals and wisdom we are still thriving, happy, and willing to share the prosperity that transcends material wealth, that exists as an attitude, a fact of life, a way of looking at the world that embodies those values that the consumerist world wants to deny. Food is at the center of these communities: a respectful relationship with the land on which you live and the animals with whom you live. This is a way of perceiving the world in a holistic sense, where everything is a part of something greater, starting from the simplest place.

The gift of this book lies in the depth with which it introduces us to the slow lives of ordinary people. The photographs and words are rich and undeniably authentic, and could only have been made by someone with a deep sensitivity and understanding that goes beyond the boundaries of nations and languages, and represents the principles at the very heart of the Slow Food movement.

Through this unusual portrait of a Tuscan community, we come to understand that living slowly, once learned, can be done anywhere. It is not a matter of luck; it is a matter of choice.