30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Could have been titled "Potato Vignettes", February 11, 2009
This review is from: Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent (Hardcover)
The rather pompous subtitle, "A History of the Propitious Esculent" provides a bit of a warning up front. (It means "favorable edible thing", so you don't have to look it up.) This is not a book that draws you along, or really achieves a sense of story. But if you are interested in potatoes there is interesting information that can be extracted.
The author manages to start the book with Mars, asserting that astronauts will take potatoes with them when they go. He then moves to the Andes, from whence potatoes originate. Ancestral potatoes were toxic, and people in the Andes bred non-toxic varieties. The author discusses this as well as he can, but there is little direct evidence of how it was done. He then launches into a discussion of Andean civilizations and then the fall of the Inca to the Spanish. Acceptably done, but if you want a great account (of this and more) look at "1491" by Charles C. Mann.
The potato then makes its way to Europe, and slowly gains acceptance. (Including tales of fraud and the like.) Then comes Ireland, population explosion, and blight, death, and emigration. The discussion of the blight, how it happened, and what the consequences were is good. There is also much discussion of the politics of the time, and the fight over the Corn Laws ("corn" meaning grain, in the British use), which applied tariffs to keep out cheap foreign grain to protect British farmers. It also helped the Irish starve when the potato crop failed, and thus the blight contributed to ending a long political fight.
[Side note: I ordered the UK edition of this book based on a review in The Economist. The Economist was founded in opposition to the Corn Laws ...]
The story then moves back to the potato in Europe, especially in England. Reader argues--excessively, in my opinion--that it was the increase in population allowed by the potato that allowed the industrial revolution to take place. I'll accept that it was a contributing factor, but the author takes the argument too far.
Next is the story of how the blight was understood and means of control developed. Among these was the collection and study of many species not cultivated in Europe as potential breading varieties, good material for some adventure stories.
Reader then takes the potato to Papua New Guinea, where the Irish experience of expanded nutrition followed by blight was played out on a smaller scale. (The level of disaster that occurred in Ireland was not allowed to repeat.) He finally takes the potato to China, where he traces the story from the disastrous policies of Mao that resulted in famine to China becoming the largest producer and consumer of potatoes. But this includes an example of how the author fails to make the book one story rather than many.
Near the end he writes: "But aside from the sheer scale of the disaster, what sets Mao's famine apart from all others is that it was entirely avoidable. It had not been caused by invasion or civil war; no floods had washed away the crops or droughts dried up the fields. No blight had destroyed the harvest, and the world would have shipped in emergency supplies if only China has asked." Having already covered the Irish famine and the Soviet famine of the 1920's it should have been clear to the author that politics has nearly always been a key player in famine over the last few centuries. (In fairness, he does make the nod to "civil war". But how different was Mao's war against the Chinese people from a civil war?) The famine in Ukraine in the 1930's was intentionally imposed by Stalin! But Reader's book is so spud-centric that famine is seemingly always either caused by or alleviated by potatoes. In this he misses the bigger picture.
This book has many good stories about potatoes, but it lacks the integration and continuity to be the story of the potato. I struggled a bit between three and four stars, and chose three because it seems as though either the author or editor could have taken the material available and made a solidly four star book out of it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding Book, August 22, 2011
Reader cannot be praised enough for his book, which combines history, botany, culture, economics with a smooth and highly readable style. The humble potato has had an impact on human development way out of proportion to its ubiquitous and taken-for-granted status in the modern world (or perhaps precisely because of that status.) I found fascinating his assertion that it was endemic European war that convinced an otherwise recalcitrant population to accept the wonderful efficiency of the highly nutritious tuber. The contention that the potato has promoted population growth is convincing also, though the parallel advancements in medicine and science surely had valuable parts to play also. Fittingly, he provided China's experience with the spud as his closing anecdote, since that country has now surpassed the USA, as in so many other things, as the world's largest producer. I've read similar tomes on such consumables as vanilla, chocolate, chilies and alcohol, but reader's stands out for his erudite style and breadth of coverage, all in a reasonably sized book for the non-specialist reader like myself.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Empire of Spuds, September 26, 2009
This review is from: Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent (Hardcover)
I very much enjoyed John Reader's book on potatoes. It was well researched, well written, and enjoyable to read. It provided me with a better understanding of history, and I've been reading history for decades.
The domesticated spud is a powerful and dangerous thing. It's nutritious, highly productive, matures quickly, and can thrive in a broad spectrum of soils and climates. It has been a loose cannon in human history, fueling population outbursts, civilizations, wars, mass emigrations, and the extermination of countless indigenous societies around the world.
The blight fungus is everywhere, and it mutates continuously, so all defensive strategies inevitably fail. Thus, blight is a never-ending threat, everywhere the spud is grown, and it can completely wipe out the crop across wide regions in a matter of days. The spud is a spooky food to get addicted to.
Spud farmers spray vast amounts of fungicides in hopes of preventing blight. As Peak Oil brings the era of cheap energy to an end, it will reduce the production and increase the cost of agricultural chemicals. This means that blight will eventually win the war against domesticated spuds. This means that we may be getting close to the peak of global potato production. This means big trouble ahead. This is the one issue that Reader did not address, and it is an important point. Deduct two points.
Instead, Reader concludes that the story of the domesticated spud has been a miracle of progress, a smashing success. Domesticated spuds currently enjoy an empire that spans the globe. But every empire must crumble, and so must the empire of spuds.
Wild spuds, like wild humans, would certainly tell this story in a radically different manner. It would not be a flattering tale.
Richard Adrian Reese
Author of What Is Sustainable
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
