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Summary
Author Notes
Tom Standage is a journalist and author from England. A graduate of Oxford University, he has worked as a science and technology writer for The Guardian, as the business editor at The Economist, has been published in Wired, The New York Times, and The Daily Telegraph. His non-fiction works include The Victorian Internet, A History of the World in Six Glasses, An Edible History of Humanity (on the New York Times bestseller list in 2014), and Writing on the Wall: Social Media -- The First 2,000 Years.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Standage provides an intriguing history of how hunger has shaped civilizations and prompted technological advancements. Starting with hunter-gatherer societies, Standage traces the evolution of cuisines and addition of new ingredients to the current debates over organic and industrialized food systems. With a gentle and deep voice, George K. Wilson guides listeners through the thought-provoking theses with the tone of a knowledgeable and sincere tour guide. His emphasis and deliberate delivery help keep the prose engaging while giving sufficient aural direction for listeners to understand the relevance of a particular sentence or paragraph. A Walker hardcover. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Humanity's most basic need, along with water, is food. Earliest civilizations appeared on earth when farmers banded together and exploited their excess crops as a means of trade and currency. This allowed some people to abandon agriculture for specialized occupations such as architecture or soldiering. These settlers then organized communities and built history's earliest cities. Standage traces this ever-evolving story through Europe, Asia, and the Americas and casts human progress as an elaboration and refinement of this foundation. As food supplies stabilized, people developed tastes for items such as spices that made daily sustenance more palatable. This impetus led to interaction among cultures and civilizations and opened up the New World and its gifts of corn, potatoes, peppers, and other novelties. Standage also uncovers the aspects of food distribution that underlay such historic events as the Napoleonic Wars and the fall of the Soviet empire.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2009 Booklist
Choice Review
In his preface, Standage (business editor, The Economist) writes that he will approach history as "a series of transformations caused, enabled, or influenced by food." He asks a basic question: "Which foods have done the most to shape the modern world, and how?" In answer, Standage begins with the invention of farming and the development of hierarchal societies based on agricultural surpluses. He relates the ways the European desire for spices encouraged trade, exploration, and colonization. Subsequent chapters examine food production and distribution, from supplying armies to Stalin's and Mao's use of food as a political weapon. Standage concludes with chapters on the 1960s development of chemical fertilizers and high-yield seed varieties that resulted in the green revolution but also led to the destruction of traditional farming practices and widespread environmental damage. Standage writes gracefully for a popular audience. Compared with his earlier A History of the World in 6 Glasses (CH, Nov'05, 43-1536), this book is less focused. Though there are notes for each chapter and a brief index, readers interested in the sources of individual quotations will have to hunt for the exact citations. Summing Up: Recommended. General and undergraduate libraries. T. J. Bond Washington State University
Guardian Review
Food can grind the lens through which we view the big facts. Wars were often food-related, no matter the specious reasons advanced by belligerents, and often won by superior logistics, not strategy or tactics. Human performance, capacity and stamina were dependent on diet, irrespective of the innate brilliance of the protagonists, just as the emotional temperature of an age or an emperor might well have been more to do with meals than culture or civility. Prehistoric man took giant leaps in brainpower in step with improvements in his diet; the 12th-century renaissance that gave us Heloise and Abelard was due mainly to better agriculture and more protein-rich legumes rather than heightened sensibility or appreciation of the classics - for Abelard, not so much cherchez la femme as cherchez le pain These are some of the thoughts provoked, though not always advanced, by Tom Standage's An Edible History of Humanity , which is a readable guide to some aspects of this field. Of course, it can't live up to its title in 270 pages, but it can give useful pointers. A journalist by profession, he writes with an eye to comprehension and a sure touch with anecdote and illustration. Each chapter can be digested with the ease of a Sunday supplement, be it discussing the birth of agriculture, the Columbian exchange, the adoption of the potato, the Berlin airlift, Chairman Mao's "great leap forward" famine, or the spice trade through 15 centuries. For my part, I found him more interesting on the far-flung history than the more up-to-date stuff and consider his account of the shift from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture a masterpiece of summary and explanation. It is always a mystery why we gave up the sunny pleasure of picking our favourite foods Adam-and-Eve-style from the forests around us for the daily slog of weeding, feeding and mucking out the cowshed. It's even more mysterious when we read that early farmers were smaller and sicker than their hunter-gathering friends. Why on earth, when and how did it happen? He makes a brilliant stab at bringing sense to the table. The history of food should include its absence - a lack pretty germane to those who suffer from it. Standage considers famine, and so - to the exclusion of everything else - does Cormac O Grada in his Famine: A Short History . It's not quite a history, more an analytical look; if you want a blow-by-blow chronicle, go elsewhere. But it's gripping stuff. There is so much about famine that is counter-intuitive. Most are caused not by lack of food but by market failures, administrative incompetence, political intransigence, mere brutality and loathsomeness. Most people in famines don't die from hunger but from infectious diseases. Those who were conceived during famines are more likely to suffer from obesity. Men are more likely to die during famines than women. The list could continue, and Professor O Grada will doubtless have an apposite table or graph. The reader will be struck by the incredible staying power of the Malthusian fear of population growth, and by the remarkable modern achievement in nearly getting rid of famine altogether. Rather like smallpox, we just don't do it any more (exceptions excluded). If there is one chapter that needs repeated broadcast, it is that which deals with Cassandras of yesteryear. There's Malthus, of course, but, closer in date, there are people such as Paul Ehrlich, William Dando and Wallace Aykroyd, who were all loudly convinced (from the 1960s to the 80s) of the coming "Great Die Off" from endemic famine and overpopulation. It's a small consolation to those who worry about global warming. Books about food and the history of food usually think of dinner as a commodity, rarely tackling the question of cookery. It is easier to get your head round the concept that growing more wheat is good, or that less is bad, than to work out whether a culture that cooks its wheat as a gruel has something over another which converts it into bread. So we have a surfeit, I would say, of discussions of foodstuffs and not nearly enough about dishes. Yet the whirlwind success of such books as Margaret Visser's Much Depends on Dinner points to the perennial allure of the topic, if only one can draw meaningful conclusions. Which is why the new Edible series from Reaktion is to be welcomed. More titles have appeared, including Pie by Janet Clarkson and Spices by Fred Czarra. Short and sweet, they should address the question of cookery. Alas, they don't. The spice book wanders almost incomprehensibly through the dense and complex history of the spice trade, ignoring how people used spices and which were the preference of this culture or that period. The pie book fails to include most pies from beyond Britain, and relies on anecdote rather than structure for its British account. Writing and conceiving short books is a great art, and these are apprentice pieces. Tom Jaine runs Prospect Books, a specialist food imprint. To order An Edible History of Humanity for pounds 17.99, Famine for pounds 15.95, Pie for pounds 8.99, or Spices for pounds 8.99, all with free UK p&p, call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846. guardian.co.uk/bookshop These are some of the thoughts provoked, though not always advanced, by Tom Standage's An Edible History of Humanity , which is a readable guide to some aspects of this field. Of course, it can't live up to its title in 270 pages, but it can give useful pointers. A journalist by profession, he writes with an eye to comprehension and a sure touch with anecdote and illustration. Each chapter can be digested with the ease of a Sunday supplement, be it discussing the birth of agriculture, the Columbian exchange, the adoption of the potato, the Berlin airlift, Chairman Mao's "great leap forward" famine, or the spice trade through 15 centuries. For my part, I found him more interesting on the far-flung history than the more up-to-date stuff and consider his account of the shift from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture a masterpiece of summary and explanation. It is always a mystery why we gave up the sunny pleasure of picking our favourite foods Adam-and-Eve-style from the forests around us for the daily slog of weeding, feeding and mucking out the cowshed. It's even more mysterious when we read that early farmers were smaller and sicker than their hunter-gathering friends. Why on earth, when and how did it happen? He makes a brilliant stab at bringing sense to the table. - Tom Jaine.
Kirkus Review
Society is what it eats. That's the contention of Economist business editor Standage (A History of the World in Six Glasses, 2005, etc.). Writers have given close scrutiny to the histories of individual foods, cuisines and traditions, he notes, but have rarely looked at the history of food on a global scale. That's why he decided to write this meaty little volume, which "concentrates specifically on the intersections between food history and world history." Tapping into fields as diverse as economics, anthropology, archaeology and genetics, the author asks a simple question: Which foods have had the most influence on shaping the world we live in today? Surprisingly, the list is short; corn, wheat, rice and the potato have been predominant in agriculture and commerce. But history isn't Standage's only concern. He takes the long view to illuminate and contextualize such contemporary issues as genetically modified foods, the complex relationship between food and poverty, the local food movement, the politicization of food and the environmental outcomes of modern methods of agriculture. It's a tall order, impressively filled. Food was pivotal in the creation of social hierarchies in prehistoric cultures. It was central to the spread of European colonial powers. The Industrial Revolution sprang from concerns over food. The Soviet Union collapsed because food was running out. Advancements in biotechnology have proved a double-edged sworda boon to the hungry and a bane to the environment. Written in the lucid, plain and rather stiff prose familiar to readers of the Economist, the book, like the magazine, is cogent, informative and insightful. An intense briefing on the making of our world from the vantage point of food history. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Standage's previous book, A History of the World in 6 Glasses, theorized that the titular six drinks were reflections of the eras in which they were created. In this new work, he instead shows how one of humanity's most vital needs (hunger) didn't simply reflect but served as the driving force behind transformative and key events in history. Dividing the vast subject into six general sections (such as food's role in the development of societies and social hierarchies, its impact on population and industrialization, and its uses as a weapon both on the battlefield and off), Standage illustrates each section with historical examples and observations. Some topics, like the spice trade's encouragement of exploration, are fairly obvious choices, but the concise style and inclusion of little-known details keep the material both entertaining and enlightening. Perhaps the most interesting section is the final one, which looks at the ways in which modern agricultural needs have acted as a spur for technological advancement, with Standage providing a summary of the challenges still faced by the green revolution. Recommended for both public and academic libraries.-Kathleen McCallister, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
