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S'està carregant… An Edible History of Humanityde Tom Standage
Big History (53) S'està carregant…
Apunta't a LibraryThing per saber si aquest llibre et pot agradar. No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra. After three months, I finally powered through the end. The final third of the book was enjoyable; I'm just disappointed it took that far to really get interesting. Though the first portion wasn't easy to get through, Tom's insight on the future of food availability and its impact on society was interesting and on par with his conclusions in 6 Glasses. ( ) The beginning was interesting but got rather dull towards the end. The author is a business writer for "The Economist" and boy can you tell he is! The whole later half of the book may as well have been titled, "The economics of items tangentially related to food" rather than, "An Edible history of Humanity". Other people might enjoy his perspective but I think I was looking for a book about food history and culture instead of economic theories. I mostly liked this author's "A History of the World in Six Drinks" for the small stuff. it's one thing to write about, say, Napoleon or democracy and quite another to try to figure out what eighteenth-century Frenchmen really thought about coffee. There isn't exactly a lot of that here. Standage does a very creditable job of making the case that food is a prime mover in human history and explaining how, exactly, we got to where we are, dietetically speaking. He skillfully reframes some big transitions in human history, such as the move from hunting and gathering to agriculture and from natural energy sources to industrial production. It's the sort of book everyone should read, though I rather suspect that readers who have read more deeply in history than I have will have already heard much of this from other authors. Perhaps it's the sort of history that I should have read long ago. Still, it's efficient and well composed and a good starting place for those just just starting to get their historical bearings. Fans of Yuval Harari will probably find a lot to like here. Readers looking for delectable morsels of long-buried historical knowledge may have to look elsewhere, though. Sense ressenyes | afegeix-hi una ressenya
Cooking & Food.
History.
Nonfiction.
HTML: Throughout history, food has acted as a catalyst of social change, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is a pithy, entertaining account of how a series of changes---caused, enabled, or influenced by food---has helped to shape and transform societies around the world. The first civilizations were built on barley and wheat in the Near East, millet and rice in Asia, corn and potatoes in the Americas. Why farming created a strictly ordered social hierarchy in contrast to the loose egalitarianism of hunter-gatherers is, as Tom Standage reveals, as interesting as the details of the complex cultures that emerged, eventually interconnected by commerce. Trade in exotic spices in particular spawned the age of exploration and the colonization of the New World. Food's influence over the course of history has been just as prevalent in modern times. In the late eighteenth century, Britain's solution to food shortages was to industrialize and import food rather than grow it. Food helped to determine the outcome of wars: Napoleon's rise and fall was intimately connected with his ability to feed his vast armies. In the twentieth century, Communist leaders employed food as an ideological weapon, resulting in the death by starvation of millions in the Soviet Union and China. And today the foods we choose in the supermarket connect us to global debates about trade, development, the environment, and the adoption of new technologies. Encompassing many fields, from genetics and archaeology to anthropology and economics---and invoking food as a special form of technology---An Edible History of Humanity is a fully satisfying discourse on the sweep of human history. .No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
Autor amb llibres seus als Crítics Matiners de LibraryThingEl llibre de Tom Standage An Edible History of Humanity estava disponible a LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Debats actualsCapCobertes populars
Google Books — S'està carregant… GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)394.1209Social sciences Customs, Etiquette, Folklore General Customs Eating, drinking, using drugs Eating and drinking History, Geography, PeoplesLCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana:
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