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Propitious Esculent: The Potato In World History (2008)

by John Reader(Favorite Author)

3.71 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0434013188 (ISBN13: 9780434013180)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

William Heinemann

review 1: This is a strong and well researched book. While constructed as a chronological narrative and social history, there are some powerful arguments offered about the changing land use in Europe in particular, particularly through the industrial revolution.The Irish Potato Famine is a recurring motif through the book. Two chapters are dedicated to this history. Reader offers a powerful context for the scale and scope of the tragedy, and its longer term impact in Europe in particular.This is a fine and innovative book, inserting hundreds of years of history through the cultivation of this 'propitious esculent.' It is of great benefit to historians of food, economic historians and food studies writers.
review 2: More interesting than one would think the humble spu... mored would be. Starts with the origin of the potato in the Andes mountains of South America. The potato's spread in Europe seems to have been spread the unwillingness of marauding troops in the 18th century to dig them up when looting, a lack of gumption that peasants everywhere noted and took advantage of when deciding which crops to plant. About 2/3 of the way through we get to the inevitable coverage of the Irish potato famine of the 1840s; for a plant whose leaves are poisonous for us to each, potatos are remarkably suspectible to wide variety of plant diseases. Author ends with the developments in potato breeding and cultivation in the early 21st century. less

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