An Edible History of Humanity

In this highly informative and interesting book, Tom Standage chronicles the evolution of food, explaining how humanity's first meals were hunted and gathered by people who literally lived off the land and how a shift towards farming and a development of agriculture prompted the first civilizations to be built. As people and cultures evolved, so did food's place in society, and as Standgae relates, food became, by turns, a power to exploit, a wealth to hoard, and a very special focus of politics. From the spice trade to the special cultivation of seeds that will miraculously survive disease and drought, Standage gives us the history of food as it relates to the history of people, societies, and governments in an engaging and interesting buffet that will delight and titillate even the most quaint appetite.

The sheer amount of information in this book was very impressive. Standgae has a way of making all of these minute bits of information not only interesting, but important. Far from being a weighty and dry tome, this book had me involved and curious from the very first pages. The information provided is obscure yet relevant in today's society, where it seems that everything of consequence is minutely examined; after reading this book, I came to see that food is of much greater consequence then I had previously thought.

I really enjoyed the sections that dealt with the propagation of special seeds that were basically engineered to maximize the growth and nutritional output of the various crops. Standage explains how just a small strip of a plant called teosinte was eventually bred into the corn that we now find in the supermarket, and how wheat was altered to be shorter, stronger and more easily harvested. Other chapters dealt with how transporting food across the ocean actually made great strides in spreading Islam beyond it's traditional boundaries, and how the rise of industrialization both in food production and in other sectors changed our history, particularly in Europe.

I was constantly amazed by this book because the information was so varied and there was so much more than just food encapsulated within these pages. From the topic of food logistics during war to a special section called "Food As a Weapon," Standage imparts his wisdom like a particularly friendly and engaging professor. I found the book to be very conversational, and though the information presented was academic most of the time, I didn't feel that the author was making his explanations impenetrable with concepts or topics that the average reader could not understand. I don't even think that one needs to have a background in history to appreciate or understand this book because Standage does a great job of filling in the gaps about what was going on in the various sectors of the world during the time frames he is examining.

This book doesn't really talk about food a a gustatory experience: you won't find recipes or tales of exotic meals. What you will find is the progression of food from an object of sustenance to an object of power, and onwards towards its scientific manipulation and use as a precursor of both population explosion and decline. You will find out why the Aztecs began to sacrifice food to their gods in favor of people, and why a small chemical reaction dramatically changed the way food was grown. You will find out how food was preserved throughout history (one of my favorite sections, I have to say), and how food had direct responsibility for the slave trade. This book provides the answers and explanations for many of the food questions that you may have never even thought about, and gives an accurate and flavorful account of just how and why things end up on our plate.

I am not normally a reader of non-fiction, and although this book wasn't exactly what I expected, I found it totally absorbing. Once again, I followed my husband about the house reading quotes and passages to him, which is something I only do when a book has me completely hooked. I liked the fact that the author was very direct and didn't meander, and that all his facts were so relevant towards today's food-conscious mindset. I think that this would be a great read for anyone who has even a modicum of curiosity about food, or if you are fond of non-fiction that is extremely well written. An excellent book that I am sure will enable some excellent conversations. Highly recommended.

What an interesting way to look at human history! This book starts off with making the point that none of the plant foods we eat today are "natural", but were selectively developed in near pre-history by our ancestors out of wild plants that are very different, and talks about what kinds of genetic changes happen to a wild plant to make it suitable for domestication. Then it talks about the transition from hunting-gathering to farming, from small bands with few possessions to large settlements with lots of possessions and social stratification. Next it looks at spices, the spice trade, how it drove the exploration of the world, the exchange of knowledge and ideas, and colonization. In the more recent centuries, the book talks about the spread of a few staple foods such as potato, maize, and wheat around the world, how food supplies (or lack of) affected military campaigns, the development of canning as a food preservation technique, famines in regions dependent on mono-crops, industrialization, the chemical explorations that led to the development of artificial fertilizers, the "green revolution" and modern plant selection. It closes with the Svalbard Seed Bank.

Regarding the reviewers who found it dry: at first, flipping through the book, it looked dry, but once I started reading the words, I was fascinated with this novel way of looking at the development of civilization. I guess it all depends on where your interests lie, I am interested in food and botany and new ways of looking at history, so this book hit the spot for me.

Tom Standage is a journalist rather than a formal historian, but this book, along with his previous A History of the World in Six Glasses, are examples of history writing at its best. In this work, Standage examines the basic human need for sustenance and traces how that need has led to the development of civilization. He begins with the hunter gatherers, goes on to the development of agriculture and the evolution of a more sedentary lifestyle in small villages, then on to the ever increasing complexities of the civilized world. Standage includes many intriguing stories, like the development of maize as a genetically modified crop by the ancient Native Americans; or the discovery of trade wind patterns in the Indian Ocean as a by-product of the classical desire for spices.

Much of Standage's work will sound familiar to readers of Diamond, McNeill, and Crosby, but his concentration on humanity's search for reliable food supplies is unique and very valuable. He writes entertainingly without sacrificing scholarship, and An Edible History of Humanity will appeal to professionals and amateurs alike.

Tom Standage covers the history of food in twelve short chapters. The book is divided into six parts of two chapters each, and includes: The Edible Foundations of Civilization; Food and Social Structure; Global Highways of Food; Food, Energy, and Industrialization; Food as a Weapon; and Food, Population, and Development.

I gave the book only four stars because I was somewhat disappointed by the lack of depth to the material. However, the book is a quick read and a good overview for the reader who has no background in the topic of food history. Standage does include some brief notes and a list of sources for any reader who wants to pursue the subject.

Author Tom Standage certainly has a point, food and whether or not it is plentiful or scarce, balanced or limiting, has helped to drive not just population numbers but also the structure of society, economics, politics, and mores. Of course, this point is well known.

As Standage makes exhaustively clear, in a hunter/gatherer society populations must remain small because of the constant foraging for food. Those societies valued group flexibility to seek food, jealousy for the group over lands where food proved plentiful, and loyalty to the group to ensure that they were all cared for as best they could. Sharing of food was a common attribute of these cultures. To exploit the possibilities of agriculture and domesticated animals, humanity stratified society, organized complex structures for the acquisition and distribution of food, and gave rise to the first organized political entities in the city-states of the ancient New East.

The story since then has been one of endless innovation, advancing complexity, and ever more successful methods of creating more food--and more diverse food--from the same amount of land. The author takes us on a breathless survey of this evolutionary process during the 150,000 years since the first humans emerged. He assigns to food, and the search for it, virtually all major catalysts in human transformation. This is a bit of a stretch, but only a bit; Standage's insistence on the centrality of food to the rise of social and economic inequality, organized religion, and war made me long for the simplicity and clarity of the life of hunter/gatherers. Indeed, as those who watched the last episode of "Battlestar Galactica" in Spring 2009 will recollect, the survivors of the complex technological society of the Twelve Colonies chose to abandon that society in favor of a hunter/gatherer future on a planet because of the abuses that had gone down. No doubt, Standage would have been pleased with the implications this decision had for his thesis of food as the driver of the human condition.

Standage sees the securing of greater and more diverse food supplies as the catalyst for much of the activities of humanity from the beginning. For example, he views the quest to explore as largely motivated by the search for food, the trade policies of nations are dependent on these same dynamics, and even to the recent past food has been a powerful diplomatic tool. It was used in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and still dictates positions on trade, development, the future of the global environment, population control, and related issues. He also gets into the debate over genetically-modified organisms and the issues of green revolution.

Without question, Tom Standage is right about his thesis that food is central to human development. But as I read I kept looking for some insight that I did not already know. Failing to find it, I give this book three stars. The best that may be said about "An Edible History of Humanity" is that it is a serviceable general survey of an important subject. It might be helpful for a high school or undergraduate college level student who has never been exposed to these ideas before. For anyone with even a cursory knowledge, however, this book is too general and unsophisticated to warrant expending time on it. More important, however, there is a sense that this text is an undigested--to use a bad term when talking about food--series of facts without either context or analysis. There are much better books that cover at least major sections of the same subject more effectively. Even with its flaws, Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" (W.W. Norton, 1997), is a broadly interpretive work that includes the role of food in history as an important element of its analytical structure.

This book, written by an editor of The Economist, tells of the crucial role food has played in history. It started out talking about myths and beliefs of primitive peoples in regard to food, whch account I found very dull, but the book sooon improved and the last five of the six parts of the book are high in interest. He dips into the future as well, and indicates that the world's population will peak in 2075 at 9.2 billion and will then go down. You younger foldk can see whether he is right, but I won't be here to check as to the accuracy of this projection. The book could have been improved by footnotes or my specific source notes.

I was really excited about this book because I have a strong interest in food history but found current widely recommended books like Food: A Culinary History (European Perspectives) to be incredibly dry and hard to get through. This isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world, but it does mean you have to be in a certain mindset to read these kind of books.

This book is still very dry, but less so than other food history books. It definitely reads more like a history textbook than something like The United States of Arugula: The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution or The Warmest Room in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home. However, it is still MUCH more approachable than Food: A Culinary History (European Perspectives).

It also reads like a very well researched book and seems credible and consistent, especially when compared with other food history books.

The bottom line is that this book is one of the more approachable and enjoyable to read as far as food history goes, but doesn't quite have the quality and vibrancy of writing of other examples of food writing. I would recommend it of the books that are available, but am still holding out for a food history book that is more dynamic and written with a sense of life. A more textbook approach is okay sometimes but often leads me picking up another food book instead of this one.

There are no recipes within this always interesting and well-written work. However, there are enough salient data concerning mankind's relationship with his meals to cause a reader to alter the way he views what may be on his plate. Perhaps the most startling hypothesis of author Standage is that when man ceased to be primarily a hunter/gatherer in order to take up farming, the resultant displacement of wild foods brought about a permanent decline in his well-being as a species. In effect, farming, according to Standage, has altered man's fate to a greater extent than "any other human activity". Devotees of "natural foods" may be startled at his wholesale denial that such a category exists due to alterations of agricultural products throughout the range of civilized centuries. In essence, the author's view centers upon the effect of economic geography upon political systems, and his wry conclusions to each chapter will be welcome to students of irony. The expansive range of topics insures that most readers of the book will find therein something of abiding interest. As examples: the discovery and subsequent domestication for crop purposes of grains, such as rice and wheat; the shift of a socially equal system of hunting/gathering to a strictly hierarchical order brought about by farming; the impact of the trade in spices upon civilizations; the distribution of critical food substances between disparate population groups; the enormous importance of food supplies to military historicism; and, throughout, the relationship between agricultural productivity and the development of successful economic systemic distribution. Each page of this fascinating volume will be of interest to most readers, particularly those focussed upon the history of civilizations. Valuable bibliographic references are included, as are notes and a well-organized index.

In The Edible History of Humanity, Tom Standage takes the history of the World and breaks it down into one simple book by looking simply at how food and agricultural habits have shaped history. Standage makes learning about history interesting in an innovative way and engages you with unusual facts. Starting off as hunters and gatherers, people have only recently changed into agricultural people in the time line of Earth. Three main foods are most important in history: Potatoes in the Americas, rice in Asia, and wheat in the East. The farming of these foods eventually lead to many highly organized social structures which was the starting point for early settled societies. Standage also explains that spices were what drew many people from Europe to the Americas. I choose this book because of recommendations by my teacher and the interesting topic.
This book does not focus on one specific time period; rather, it shows the entire history of the world. This book provides several examples of how migration and food production go hand and hand. Standage talks about the gradual change from the hunter and gatherer type society to a more agricultural based society and how it significantly impacted how we get and eat food today. Addressed as well, was the fact that a modern type society requires a surplus of resources and food. The hunter and gatherers would not have the means to create large strictures like the Pyramids of Egypt or the Ziggurats of Mesopotamia. Therefore, a large contribution to great structures would not be possible without the switch from a hunter-gatherer society to a settled agricultural society. He also notes that spices were one of the main reasons Columbus made the great journey to the Americas. When Columbus actually arrived in the Americas, he was involved with two of the most important exchanges of crops ever made with the Americas. This introduced maize to the Europeans where it received the new name of corn. This time on the receiving end, the new world received Sugar cane, which changed the eating habits of many civilizations forever.
Tom Standage, born in London, England, has written many other books besides The Edible History of Humanity, such as History of the World in Six Glasses, The Victorian Internet, The Turk, and The Neptune File. Standage has written articles for Wired, the New York Times, and many other popular newspapers and magazines. Standage is the Digital Editor for The Economist and oversees their website. After studying theoretical computing and engineering at both Oxford University and Dulwich College, he now lives in Greenwich, England with his wife and children.
The Edible History of Humanity has shown me that history is much more than names and dates, it is a series of causes and effects and each action is involved in something greater. When a few outcasts decided it was better to plant something than to go searching for it over and over again, it had a huge impact on our lives today. While those few did not know the impact they would have, we now know that it was one of the most influential decisions of human kind ever made.
I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about how food has shaped our world. It is very fast passed and a quick read while still getting to the point. This book made learning about history easy and had little fun facts sprinkled in to make it even more enjoyable. Standage also includes interesting quotes and relevant maps that show the flow of trade and spread of certain foods and this helps the reader comprehend the material at hand. The Edible History of Humanity is truly a pleasant and informative read.

Many issues debated today can be better understood by examining the history of food. For example, while many protest the production of genetically engineered food, this book shows how almost all the food we eat is genetically modified. Corn is not a wild type of plant but started as a grass that though centuries of human selection became corn. This books also gives insight to the debate over socialisms and shoes that some of the biggest famines in history where caused socialist programs.

An edible history of humanity explores food as a catalyst for evolution of mankind's culture and growth and evolution of population. The author takes us from the stone age to modern times and explains how the changing in harvesting, cultivation, and processing of food has changed the way people conduct their lives. I was particularly interested in reading about the process of food preservation and how it impacted the average citizen.

In general, I found this book enlightening, I did not find it an easy read. It had a really dry academic flavor at times and I didn't enjoy certain sections. I felt the author missed the opportunity to engage the readers by making the prose too academic. There were some sections I found myself losing interest in and skimming.

Overall, it was interesting, but I have no hankering to read it over. 3 stars.

Such a fantastic read. Standage makes history fun and exciting in this easy to follow history of the world. Looking at food, he bounces between then and now implications on our choices on growing and improving agricultural crops. Seriously, this is a must read. In just 240 pages, you'll be blown away by the past.

"An Edible History of Humanity" by Tom Standage is a fascinating study of food's impact on human history. Managing to condense 150,000 years of history to a mere 242 pages, Mr. Standage does an admirable job of touching on the major issues that one might expect to find while providing plenty of deft touches filled with insight and perspective. The end result is an engaging and informative book that should interest a wide audience.

Mr. Standage contends that food has been a major catalyst of human transformation. Mr. Standage begins by comparing and contrasting the hunter/gatherer with the farmer, providing a captivating narrative about the processes by which humans learned to become sedentary beings over the course of several thousands of years. Permanent settlements made possible by agriculture gave rise to civilizations marked by social inequality, nobility and power, organized religion, and war. Mr. Standage explains how food linked civilizations and created intercontinental rivalries, with Europe's desire to find a trade route around the Muslim Curtain directly to Asian spice suppliers resulting in the accidental discovery of the New World. The subsequent exchanges of foods and the creation of new trading patterns soon changed demographics, cultures and power relationships around the world.

For example, Mr. Standage points out that Great Britain's industrialization was achieved by improved agricultural output, food imports and the burning of fossil fuels, marking a new epoch in human history inasmuch as it demonstrated an escape from the constraints imposed by living plants with respect to the amount of food and fuel that could be consumed at any one time and place. Mr. Standage goes on to discuss how food has played a key role in military campaigns, politics and industrialization, with nitrogen fertilizers making both the Green Revolution of the 1960s and the modern explosives industry possible. Today, Mr. Standage believes that an end to world population growth is in sight, as nations such as China and India make the transition from agriculture to industrialization which is typically accompanied by significant decreases in family size.

Some readers may be disappointed, however, that Mr. Standage does not discuss how the production and distribution of food has lately come under corporate control. This is somewhat surprising, given that the ascendancy of multinational corporations to power is the defining characteristic of the current phase of civilization, as Thomas Friedman has famously argued. Therefore, readers who want to explore this important issue might supplement Mr. Standage's book with Vandana Shiva's Earth Democracy, Helena Paul and Ricarda Steinbracher's Hungry Corporations, or Raj Patel's Stuffed and Starved to learn more.

Overall, Mr. Standage's book provides an interesting and different perspective on human history. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Interesting look at major historical events when food really mattered. This books skips through history stopping at major places like the agricultural revolution and World War I to explain the impacts of food technology on history.

This book is like Michael Pollan on prozak. Like Pollan, Standage weaves a fascinating story that pulls our most basic daily craving into a rich fabric of history and culture. Unlike Pollan, he tells the story from the perspective of human circumstance and creativity in a way that celebrates history without blame or judgement. Throughout, Standage uses food to explain the big questions of history that I never thought to ask - Was agriculture good? Why did Britain industrialize first? Why did evolutionary theory come so late? - in a way that will continue to shift the questions I ask about history. I recommend this book to anyone who eats.

Forgive the pun, but this book isn't particularly satisfying. It isn't bad, but it isn't great either. Standage isn't really a historian, and this book is merely a repackaging of various scholars' works. Standage's main qualifications for writing this book is that he's read three books by Jared Diamond, but what armchair historian hasn't?

Not only does his methodology leave a bad taste in the mouth, but also his narrative is unpalatable (okay, so it's not that bad, but I couldn't resist more food puns). Standage commits the unforgivable sin in pop-history by being tedious. He sort of repeats himself, and frequently doesn't go anywhere with the narrative. What's more, he doesn't tell one story. He'll talk about domestication for a while, he'll talk about spices for a while, he'll talk about supply lines in war for a while. He doesn't write a narrative about food; he just gives a few unrelated episodes from various time periods and calls it a history.

You really have to be dedicated to finish it. It's just okay.

(Based on an "Advance Reading Copy")

The stories in this book slightly expand upon well-known history (high-school level) with only short excursions into the food aspects of those stories, and even some of those are part of the standard curriculum. There are lots of additional little details that make the stories lively and interesting while you are reading them, but don't add to the "takeaways".
-- If you are already interested in history (like me), there is very little that you will find new or worth repeating. The extent to which the stories are pared down (omissions and over-simplifications) can become annoying.
-- If you come to this book intrigued by the title but with little background in history, this level of detail is beneficial.
-- If you remember only basic history, the stories provide some additional depth: "That's interesting" but not "Wow".

If your only brush with the study of history has been in required courses, this is a member of a large class of books that demonstrate how looking at events from different perspectives can be fun. However, for a much more satisfying introductory food-centric view of history and economics, I would recommend the book Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures.

The book's writing itself is very good: clear, concise and disciplined (except for the final chapter). The story-telling is well done, and my reaction in the early chapters was that stories were cut off too soon (just as things seemed to be getting interesting).

Some other reviews commented on unnecessary repetition, but I didn't find it annoying. I saw the problem as the stories not having enough depth to allow enough variability in the necessary reminders of the themes.

I expected the book to explore transformative events--where the food itself changed society/history and vice versa--but those that are included here are also found in generic introductory history books and courses. In too many stories, especially from Ch 9 (pg 145) on, food is merely incidental. For example, the Berlin Airlift (1948-49) involved replacing truck and train transport with aircraft. The exact nature of the cargo--food, fuel, whatever--is irrelevant to the story. Similarly, the "spice trade" (Ch 5) was not about food, but a range of luxury goods in which spices were prominent. Aside: technically spices may not qualify as food (nourishment), but simply be additives.

The focus is almost entirely on the major global food crops, largely ignoring animals and crops of local significance. Rice does not get its due. I don't remember legumes (beans et al) or fruit being mentioned.

The book also focuses on the relationship of food to political power. There is negligible attention to the technological aspects--from tools to architecture and urban design--which I find the more fascinating. Canning and manufacturing fertilizer are the only ones I remember being mentioned here.

The book also fails to make connections and to apply themes developed in one portion of the book to stories in another. And it misses connections from the past to the present. These connections are a major part of the fun (and "Wow") of this class of histories.

For those with a background in history: In various stories, I spotted serious omissions and obsolete interpretations that, although they didn't really bear on the point being made, did raise my skepticism.

The "Notes" section provides minimal linkages from the Parts (pairs of chapters) into the References. Many of the references are specialized academic journals and limited publication books. While I understand the requirement for such references, this book is being marketed to a mass audience and the Notes/References should provide links useful to that audience: While some of the references are available, finding them amongst the others probably involves more effort than the typical reader will invest.

Comparison to Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: Multiple reviews make favorable comparisons, but for me they were worlds apart. I found lots of interesting details and analyses in the Diamond book that were new to me.

Additional Recommendation (2009-05-20): 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. The descriptions of various Indian societies includes a much more sophisticated, richer and broader perspective on food, from hunter-gatherers to predominantly agricultural with many combinations between. Many people do not realize that many so-called hunter-gatherers "farmed" wild animals, substantially modifying the environment to encourage their growth (numbers and usable meat) and then "harvested" them. Example, Indians cut down huge swathes of forests from the Mississippi to the Appalachians to bring buffalo herds east. Example, they burned forests to make better habitat for deer. Similarly, they modified the environment to favor plants that they favored, often crossing into the gray area where they would plant seeds, but not do any other of the activities regarded as "agriculture". And do check out the critiques of this book--many are interesting and informative.

The book's claim that humans _chose_ to go from hunter-gatherers to fixed-site agriculture is contrary to the histories I learned: Those histories attributed the change to being forced by population growth. After the human population has exceeded the "carrying capacity" of the land, the alternatives to starving were expansion (conquest), emigration (if there is anywhere to go) or modifying the environment to produce more food. This produced the stages mentioned in the previous paragraph. This theory also provides a much better explanation for what the book notes about the transition: harder, longer work and decreased health.

Why three stars: Halfway through the book, I knew it had problems and was thinking "4 stars?" but subsequent chapters were poorer and the final chapters forced. In writing this review, I found myself struggling to find good things to say about the book, but I balanced that against my reactions while reading the book.

------- Overview of chapters -------
Ch 1 ("The Invention of Farming"): A quick, clean introduction to domestication and breeding of plants. But not relevant until much later in book.
Ch 2-4 ("The Roots of Modernity", "Food, Wealth and Power", "Follow the Food"): The transition from hunter-gatherers to agriculture and settlements and larger societies. Focus on power relationships, not the technology changes. Again a quick overview, with nothing that you wouldn't have encountered in any introduction to this topic.
Ch 5&6 ("Global Highways of Food": "Splinters of Paradise" & "Seeds of Empire"): The spice trade (routes and participants) and related European colonization. Voyages of exploration. Interesting 3-page segment on modern transportation costs for food, including why local food can have the larger carbon footprint.
Ch 7 ("New World, New Food"): Standard account with additional specificity on the advantages of maize (corn) and potatoes. Ignores massive problems maize can cause (famine, societal collapse).
Ch 8 ("The Steam Engine and the Potato"): Overly condensed account of Irish Potato Famine. Triangular trade (ch 7) yields high-sugar English diet.
Ch 9 ("Fuel of War"): In most popular accounts of wars, the role of logistics is grossly underrepresented. Several well-known examples (Napoleon in Russia, Sherman's March to the Sea, ...). Examples not well connected, and I thought there were better choices. Food involved simply as the predominant category of supplies. Cites Rommel in North Africa in WW2 where petrol ("food" for the machines) was the primary logistical constraint.
Ch 10 ("Food Fight"): Berlin Airlift, Famines from collectivizations under Stalin and Mao, pontificating about role of (generic) food in politics.
Ch 11 ("Feeding the World"): Fertilizer and adapting crops to fertilizer-intensive cultivation.
Ch 12 ("Paradoxes of Plenty"): Lecturing on recent changes in world economies in which food plays some role. Statistic-laden summaries. Few relevant observations on current trends.
Epilogue ("Ingredients of the Future"): Seed banks.

------- Examples for above assessment -------

Missed connections: The book mentions that the Roman Empire held sway over its vast territories through a network of roads and supply depots (pg 148), allowing troops to move quickly to trouble spots. The book mentions the massive balance-of-trade deficits from the spice trade (pp 72-73), but fails to connect those (and other) deficits to the military decline of the Roman Empire. Because gold was leaving the Empire at an unsustainable rate (faster than they could mine it, with failures to replace depleted mines), they couldn't afford to keep the depots adequately stocked, nor feed the frontline troops, who then had to raise their own food. The frontier went from being held by (full-time) professional soldiers to the equivalent of militias (eg, the US National Guard or Active Reserve) that had little hope of rapid reinforcement when attacked.

Missed connection: When discussing the true costs of corn-based ethanol as fuel, it omits the substantial transportation costs (has to move by tank car/truck because it would corrode existing pipelines). Surprising since such differentials were cited in an earlier section (pg 102-104 "Local and Global Foods").

Ignoring non-global foods: When I was touring various castles in northern Europe, I was perplexed that some had stunningly large dovecotes, while others had only relatively small ones. The reason given? Turnips. Before the arrival of turnips, the overwintering of animals was severely limited in both species and quantity because of the cost of their food and the difficulty of storing it. Doves provided an important source of protein in the winter and spring because they could feed themselves by gleaning the fields and then be "harvested" as needed. With turnips, you had a highly nutritious food (for many animals) that could be "stored" in the fields (dug up during winter as needed). Remember animals provided not just food but muscle and locomotive power (and fiber and hides), and their increased availability expanded the economy. I had expected to find stories such as this, but didn't encounter a single one.

Irish Potato Famine oversimplification: Many accounts of these events mislead you into thinking that Ireland was primarily subsistence farmers when there were large estates growing grain predominantly for export. This book points this out, but then soft-pedals the failure of the English response: It ignores that there were large stores of grain immediately available and deliberate decisions were made to continue exporting rather than redirecting them to famine relief. This book jumps past this to the Corn Laws (which limited imports of grain).

Missed analysis: The book mentions that the potato blight hit hard in many countries other than Ireland, but fails to explain why they didn't have a famine. The difference was that Ireland was a de facto colony. The results (massive deaths) would have been the same if the underlying problem had been any of a wide range of other massive "natural" disasters (for example, disease). Similarly in the (politically induced) famines of Stalin and Mao, the agricultural regions were treated like colonies, with the cities (industrial regions) as the central power. The story would have been the same if the colonies' resources had not been crops, but minerals, timber, fish, etc.

Outdated analysis/missed connection to now: The section on the fall of the Soviet Union attributes it to the inefficiencies of collective farms. However, some recent analyses have greatly expanded the role of corruption: Counter-productive choices were deliberately made based upon what officials and their cronies could steal. One example was that an area ideally suited to wheat (domestic crop) but poorly suited for nut orchards was used for the latter because it was an export (cash) crop, that is, one where payments to officials could easily be hidden. The book could have used this to make a connection to its discussion of the inefficiency of corn-based ethanol in the US (a politically dictated requirement based upon special interest influence hiding behind slogans).

Questionable analysis: Conversion of East Africans to Islam: The book cites it as a consequence of positive trading relationships (pg 77), but other analyses point to protection from Arab slavers who were very active in the region (Islam forbids enslaving other Muslims).

Disingenuous analysis (added 2009-05-20): Several reviewers have remarked positively on the book's equating of selective breeding with GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms). For intellectual honesty, the two are very different: Selective breeding involves tiny steps and having both nature and the breeder evaluate the desirability of each change. GMO involves huge steps--such as introducing animal genes into plants--and with huge quantities of new organisms produced all at once. Given how complex the real world is, testing is inherently very limited. Thus, there are legitimate concerns about unexpected behavior becoming apparent only after it is too late to undo (analogous to the effects of non-native animals and plants on an ecosystem).

In school I can remember being taught about explorers and the trading of spices etc,but this book goes so much deeper and it's quite fascinating (surprise!).

Reading about the various rises and falls of some of the most notorious figures in history isn't dull,in fact it's all rather engrossing and I went in to this not expecting to be very excited,but was pleasantly surprised.

I went into this book cold,never having read Standage's other books,but I enjoy history and this book covered areas I had never considered but found interesting.
It's quite an enjoyable book and that alone surprised me

This book looks appealing on the cover, but like a cheese puff there is not much substance to it once you take a bite. Tom Standage may have thought it was a great idea to write a chronicle of food and the role that it has played in human history. But alas he bit off more than he could chew here. Hardly a history, the book reads like a series of fluffy magazine articles on peripherally-related topics: the Neolithic revolution, the spice trade, the farm-to-table movement, etc. Standage clearly has done his share of reading in anthropology, history, etc, and he sprinkles plenty of interesting facts and anecdotes, like so much salt from a shaker. But his telling of history is a superficial treatment, with few revelations: the chapter on the spice trade reads like a summary of trade-related snippets from a high school European history course.

In all, there is little in the form of grand thesis, structure or scholarship to the book, nothing to hold it together. Standage would have had better success, I think, digging more deeply into any of these topics. At the end, I was left with a feeling I have after a meal at a fast food restaurant: I know I ate something, not sure what it was, and I don't think it did much for me.

The rises and falls of human civilizations can be best understood by how different societies handle food.

That's the basic premise and the author here is dizzyingly skilled at looking at everything from early farming to Alice Waters. And who can argue with such a contention? At least that's what I though after being only 25 or so pages into this book.

My only problem here was that I wish the book were longer. I wanted crazy-detailed examinations of the big ideas. Perhaps Standage will come along with more books on this theme in the future.

Review of Tom Standage's "An Edible History of Humanity."

This important book traces the lineage of food throughout human history and the catalysts it collectively caused to force social change, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion.

Standage explores how the cultivation of food caused civilizations to rise and fall and is the key organizing principle to any and every society, both historical and contemporary.

Rife with historical examples at only 257 pages Standage's work is professionally and thoughtfully written yet understandable by the layperson.

Well done at five stars.

JP

Pretty good! Its portrayl of the influence food has had on history was very interesting. My one complaint was on page 192, where he quotes an expert who says "In the terrible history of famines in the world, no substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively free press." I'm pretty sure the Dust Bowl was a substantial famine. People did die.

Anyway, it was still an interesting book. I was amazed at how much breeding changed maize. I did not know that tigers used to be considered a spice (the word meant something different at the time). His explanation of the problems of logistics was very interesting.

The whole concept of this book sounded very intriguing and while the first part is actually pretty good, it quickly dissolves into a very dull and weakly written book that became very repetitive after a while. Wouldn't recommend.

From this book I looked at Christopher Columbus in a whole new light. The spread of Alexander's rule across the entire world was explained to me in a totally new way. Napoleon Bonaparte is a new man to me.

All of these things are brought together by describing human life (in general) and human history (in specific) in terms of the food that sustains it.

This is a good book. I think everyone can learn a lot from it. I'm glad I read it.

The idea behind this book is compelling, but the execution feels secondhand and journalistic and not scholarly enough. One would do better reading books on each of the foods discussed (e.g., Betty Fussell on corn, Victor Mair on tea, etc.).

In general, I was disappointed in this book. I somehow expected, because of its title I suppose, that this would be an exhaustive history on human beings and their sustenance. It is nowhere near that comprehensive; however, it does offer some insights into our relationship with food as a species.

For example, there has been a great deal of controversy over GMOs -- genetically modified organisms. Some people worry that interfering with the genes of our food will have unknown consequences, and it might. However, selectively breeding certain species of plants is hardly modern; in fact, the author makes a good argument that this has likely been done since pre-history. He goes on to explain the impact that farming has had on human existence.

The author also discusses the effects of the spice trade, the use of maize, the Irish potato famine, and explores the oft-heard saying that "an army marches on its stomach." Toward the end of the book he talks about nitrogen and the impact of fertilizers.

All in all this felt like a grab bag of factoids about plant foods over the course of human history. Yes, there are some good points, but the book tends to be repetitive and the history rarely strays beyond what any decently educated person should know.

For two excellent references on food, try "The Oxford Companion to Food," and "On Food & Cooking." Both are wonderful books that should satisfy most anyone's curiosity about our "edible history."

Anyone who has read much history and followed current events will learn little here. For those who haven't, this is a summary of many sources in one place - hence the three stars.

This was very dryly written, but don't worry - if you miss something the first time it will reappear later. A couple of things to keep in mind: Hunter-gatherers owned few or no possessions; Food was used to pay taxes which were in turn used to pay government workers. Among many others, you will be reminded of them over and over again. Too many times I said to the author "I got it the first time!"

Restating things, if enough pages have passed, can be a good thing. Rewording some concepts to insure clarity can also be good. Standage, however, detracts from the enjoyment of the book with this practice and his habit of stating the obvious.

This was a disappointing read.

This is not a thematic history of humanity - it is twelve vignettes about food production spanning the period from the emergence of 'settled agriculture' until today. The content is fairly standard and superficial - no more than entry level history. No surprises, original facts, or insights. The runner under this pleasantly written text is obvious: if only human societies would embrace democracy and espouse the market economy they'd live in Panglossian bliss.

This kind of approach goes under the heading of 'affirmation' - plausible evidence conjured in support of a conjecture in the hope that people will believe it to be 'true'. Another term for this kind of exercise could be marshalling of 'common sense'. Its effect is to 'feel good' about it, not to 'prove' the point. As Karl Popper has told us, in an inductive world we can only disprove a conjecture. Such truth is beyond our powers.

Turning freak chance into a stately chain of progress - retrospective rationalising - is a key ingredient. What would have happened if geniuses like Haber and Borlaugh had not appeared in the nick of time, before the world declined into famines? One dare not even speak of Marxist 'historical inevitabilities' for even these do not determine the timing of the historical contingencies.

Sharp-eyed selectivity helps - a lot. The author fondly quotes Amartya Sen to the effect that famines and democracy don't mix - the Irish potato famine being the regretful imbroglio that defeated Lord Peel's good (and timely) intentions. So 5% of the book's content is devoted to Communist famines. The eyes are pudibondly averted from all the Imperial famines Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the making of the Third World. that accompanied the forced entry of India (and China) into the international markets - individually and collectively just and bad as the Great Leap Forward. Sen is forgotten when he points out that in 1948 India and China had the same levels of life expectancy. Now China is ahead by ten years - which translates into roughly ten million unnecessary Indian deaths each year. Negligence is no crime for Mr. Standage...

Parochialism is de rigeur. Standage's history is plainly the history of the West. It starts out with ignoring great centres of food domestication (southern India - coconut and banana; Papua New Guinea; taro and other foodstuffs; Sudan, cattle) and then sails serenely across centuries of 'world history' where Africa hardly warrants more than a deprecative footnote - there is no history there, said Trevor-Roper - and India and China, well they just had more people; they did not really contribute to the world's technological development, did they? The West did it all by its clever self: numbers, gunpowder, print, and compass.

Modesty behoves the historian - Tacitus opined - particularly when confronted with embarrassing questions, one is tempted to add. The author professes ignorance of the causes of 'Great Divergence' The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.that brought backwater Europe to preponderance in the world. Not for him crude issues like plundering of the Americas, industrial-scale slavery, destruction of Western India that so incensed conservative-minded Burke, or the forced descent of China into opium addiction. Like a boat, Standage's imperialism leaves no wake.

Ignorance is no bar. According to the author, the original civilisational transition is from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture. Sorry; and where does this leave nomadic civilisations, which domesticated animals (horses, cattle, sheep and goats) without settlement? Ever heard of Genghis Khan? The Eurasian continent today is still divided roughly in accordance with his geopolitical views. Admittedly, this flaw is widespread among historians and anthropologists: Eric Gellner does the same mistake.

Finally a few omissions: if one speaks of food - well salt is food, right? History, in particular Western history, cannot be understood without a thorough knowledge of the link between salt and powerSalt. Salary and salt after all share the same root. Power coalesced around salt in the European Middle Ages, and lack of salt helped defeat the Confederacy Salt as a Factor in the Confederacy (Southern Historical Publications #4). Incidentally I'm missing a text on the civilisational role of hay: for Northern Europe was properly settled only after the invention of hay (the Romans did not have this technology).

The book is Whiggish history at its best. In the final chapter agricultural productivity inaugurates the demographic transition, and genetic tinkering plus wise Arctic burying of genetic plant material (no room for livestock in this glacial Arch) will get us any conceivable future difficulty. On page 229 Malthus ghost is 'finally put to rest'. Tom Standage has missed Jared Diamond's 'consumption factor'. True, we may produce enough calories for everyone today. But the solution of the quantity problem has been purchased at the cost of a delayed quality problem: were we to provide the whole mankind with the food lifesyle of the West, this would be roughly equivalent to increasing population to a trifling 72 billion.

Tom Standage lays out a great story for the history of we humans eating stuff. I'm a foodie so the topic is something I'm already interested in. But it never crossed my mind that there would be a book about the history of eating. I feel, apart from the the store critics, that Standage does a great job of presenting this history in a compelling fashion. I think fellow foodies will enjoy this book.

This terrific book is well-researched and well-written. It starts with the change from hunter-gather’s to farmers and brings us up to date, detailing how food has been the prime mover in history, especially in wars. The author points out that everything we eat has been, at some point, “genetically-modified’ through encouraging mutants, developments of particular strains, or cross-breading, far before the current panic of GM food in labs. Nothing we eat in mass can exist in the wild, plants or animals. I found especially interesting his discussion of how food has been used as a weapon, including in man-made famines that killed far more people through starvation than the holocaust. I highly recommend it.

Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic