The Untold History of the Potato
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.25 (781 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B00346KO3A |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 179 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-09-10 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Fascinating, really good history for anyone who eats Before I read this book, I knew that potatoes came from South America, that the Spanish brought them to the new world, that there was an Irish potato famine that drove many Irish to emigrate to America, and that french fries and potato chips aren't the healthiest foods. I have grown potatoes in my garden, so I know that there are different varieties to choose from, different sizes, shapes, colors, cooking qualities, tastes, and ripening times, and that one should not plant them in the same place repeatedly, although I've never had a problem, and they come up in the same place on their own the next year anyway. I knew about the role M. P. john purcell said To Mars From The Andes?. Most of my consulting clients are food companies. When I took on project management for an Idaho based food company I wanted to get smart on tubers. After reading the aptly named Reader's book I was not only smarter but highly entertained. This is a delightful book that puts the last 10,000 years of human history into perspective. I think the best part was Reader starting the book with the NASA research on sustaining life in space following a potato diet before Matt Damon figured it out in the Martian film.Reader takes us to colonial South America where we see early growers, agronomists, and scoundrels in action. Then potatoes come to E. Anecdotes about the Potato from Author's 3x5 card Index I guess I bought this because it was published by Yale Press, expecting a "scholarly" treatment and a serious book about the potato in history. It is not. The author is a professional pop science writer and that is what you get. But it is well done by the standards of the genre.It is a well written, often interesting, set of disconnected anecdotes and stories about all things potato. It begins with the origins in the Andes, spends a good bit of time on the Irish, and ends with pommes frites in China. There is a little bit on botany, a little bit of plant pathology, quite a lot on nasty Spaniards and Brits, and lots more. Was I bored? No
Reader focuses on sixteenth-century South America, where the indigenous potato enabled Spanish conquerors to feed thousands of conscripted native people; eighteenth-century Europe, where the nutrition-packed potato brought about a population explosion; and today’s global world, where the potato is an essential food source but also the world’s most chemically-dependent crop. The potato—humble, lumpy, bland, familiar—is a decidedly unglamorous staple of the dinner table. Or is it? John Reader’s narrative on the role of the potato in world history suggests we may be underestimating this remarkable tuber. From domestication in Peru 8,000 years ago to its status today as the world’s fourth largest food crop, the potato has played a starring—or at least supporting—role in many chapters of human history. Whether embraced as the solution to hunger or wielded as a weapon of exploitation, blamed for famine and death or recognized for spurring progress, the potato has often changed the course of human events. In this witty and engaging book, Reader opens our eyes to the power of the potato. It may be “just” a humble vegetable, John Reader shows, yet the history of the potato has been anything but dull.. Where potatoes have been adopted as a staple food, social change has always followed
From The New Yorker This enjoyably meandering history looks at the potato as a plant of paradox. Populations rise dramatically wherever it is introduced, but reliance on it “ensnares more people in poverty than it lifts out.” Reader traces the evolution of the potato from poisonous Andean weed to global staple, offering adept disquisitions on whatever captures his attention: the mysterious origins of agriculture, the economic history of Peru, the domestic arrangements of the Irish. There are glimpses of the Reign of Terror, when the ornamental gardens of the Tuileries Palace were planted with potatoes, and the Great Po