John Robbins

American heir to the Baskin-Robbins fortune, groomed from youth to take over the world's largest ice-cream company. He heard a different call, that of leading a healthy society to live in harmony. At 11, he was reading Ralph Waldo Emerson and at 13, suggested to his synagogue that they spend money helping the poor rather than on temple improvements. At 21, he decided against joining the family company, founded by his dad, Irv, and uncle Burt Baskin. He cut himself off from his trust fund and made a modest living as a therapist until his book, "Diet for a New America" 1987, hit the jackpot as a best-seller. The book is a devotional tribute to nature, a wrenching expose of inhumane conditions in the care and preparation of animals as food, leading to a rational, animal-free diet. A wrenching expose and extensively researched argument for vegetarianism, it earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination. His second book, "Reclaiming Our Health," published Fall 1996, takes on conventional medicine. Married in 1968, he and his wife Deo raised their son, named 'Ocean' in Santa Cruz, CA, where they grew their own garden. "Healing the planet is what makes him tick," Deo says. "He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders." Link to Wikipedia biography