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Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization Kindle Edition
In a masterful combination of historical sleuthing and journalistic adventure, veteran reporter Andrew Lawler “opens a window on civilization, evolution, capitalism, and ethics” (New York) with a fascinating account of the most successful of all cross-species relationships—the partnership between human and chicken. This “splendid book full of obsessive travel and research in history” (Kirkus Reviews) explores how people through the ages embraced the chicken as a messenger of the gods, an all-purpose medicine, an emblem of resurrection, a powerful sex symbol, a gambling aid, a handy research tool, an inspiration for bravery, the epitome of evil, and, of course, the star of the world’s most famous joke.
Queen Victoria was obsessed with the chicken. Socrates’s last words embraced it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur used it for scientific breakthroughs. Religious leaders of all stripes have praised it. Now neuroscientists are uncovering signs of a deep intelligence that offers insights into human behavior.
Trekking from the jungles of southeast Asia through the Middle East and beyond, Lawler discovers the secrets behind the fowl’s transformation from a shy, wild bird into an animal of astonishing versatility, capable of serving our species’ changing needs more than the horse, cow, or dog. The natural history of the chicken, and its role in entertainment, food history, and food politics, as well as the debate raging over animal welfare, comes to light in this “witty, conversational” (Booklist) volume.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAtria Books
- Publication dateDecember 2, 2014
- File size3600 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Prize-winning journalist Andrew Lawler takes on the world in this elegant and engaging paean to poultry. Part travelog, part scientific history, all rollicking good fun, this marvelous journalistic exploration scours six continents to bring us a deep appreciation and understanding of our uneasy relationship with one of nature's most fascinating creatures—from sex symbol to religious icon to ‘24-hour two-legged drugstore.’ This book challenges not only everything we thought we knew about this most beleaguered bird, but of nature itself. Astonishing.” (Ellen Ruppel Shell, Author of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, and Co-Director, Graduate Program in Science Journalism, Boston University )
“Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? is an eye-opening journey that restores the chicken to its proper place in human history. You’ll be surprised by how much you didn’t know.” (David Grimm, author of Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs )
"This fast-paced and well-written book reads like a detective story. Who would have guessed that the humble chicken’s exotic past would make such a fascinating tale full of high-stakes intrigue? If you want to be educated and entertained--move this book to the top of your reading list." (Wenonah Hauter, author of Foodopoly )
“Surprising and delightful. This engaging and provocative book tracks the chicken's transformation from gorgeous red jungle fowl to today's highly engineered animal.. A fascinating read that adds to the mounting pile of evidence that animals, even chickens, are capable of much more than we usually think." (Virginia Morell, author of Animal Wise: How We Know Animals Think and Feel )
"Comprehensive...an epic journey. A splendid book full of obsessive travel and research in history, mythology, archaeology, biology, literature and religion." (Kirkus, starred review)
"The planet's most populous and edible bird really does open a window on civilization, evolution, capitalism, and ethics. (Reading about it is lots of fun, too.)" (New York Magazine)
"Lawler is an entertaining guide with an easy touch, whimsical but never random." (vulture.com)
"Rip-roaring, erudite... His perspective gives fresh insight into the problems created by the ubiquity of chickens -- as well as possible solutions." (Nature)
"An encyclopedic examination of the chicken's ever-grorwing and complex role in societies and civilization... Readers are sure to come away with a deeper understanding of--and greater appreciation for--an animal that's considered commonplace." (Publishers Weekly)
"[An] absorbing survey of one of our most important cross-species relationships... witty, conversational." (Booklist, Starred Review)
"Wide-ranging and fascinating." (Columbus Dispatch)
“A whole flock of fun. Lawler mixes science and history…. That makes for a well-rounded, informative, and highly enjoyable book... A book you’ll crow about.” (Terri Schlichenmeyer Tyler Telegraph)
"How Cockfighting Changed History: Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? suggests that the vicious sport 'may be responsible for creating the bird that today is the world’s single most important source of protein.'” (Andrew Sullivan The Dish)
"Fascinating and delightful... Mr. Lawler’s globe-trotting tour shows that the bird has played a remarkable role in human history—and will almost certainly continue to do so. Right out of the chute, Mr. Lawler impresses us with the bird’s ubiquity... Readers will laugh—and want to buy Mr. Lawler a drink... What unfolds from this exhaustive reporting is a story not just large in scope but surprising in its details." (Christopher Leonard, author of The Meat Racket Wall Street Journal)
"An examination of the lowly chicken reveals a bird with a grand past – and a grim present. It’s time to give the 20 billion chickens on our beleaguered planet a little more respect and a lot more love... The chicken has accompanied us on each stage of our journey from primitivism to modernism...Lawler is convincing when he concludes that we are more like the chicken than we might admit,'gentle and violent, calm and agitated, graceful and awkward, aspiring to fly but still bound to earth.'” (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
"How this humble bird saved humanity -- No bird is a match for the chicken... Lawler chronicles how a wild bird from Southeast Asia ended up being mass-produced by the billions and raised in every country, he writes, except one." (Daily Beast)
"Before the middle of the 20th century, America’s chickens were a varied and hearty lot. The midcentury Chicken of Tomorrow project changed all that...just as the Manhattan Project brought together scientists, engineers, and government administrators to unlock the secret of the atom, the Chicken of Tomorrow project drew on thousands of poultry researchers, farmers, and agriculture extension agents to fashion a new high-tech device—the Cornish Cross breed of chicken we have today—built to live fast, die young." (Wall Street Journal)
"Is this the golden age of food history? ...Make room for Andrew Lawler’s paean to that most munched-on fowl of them all, the chicken. Lawler brings an omnivorous curiosity to a creature that gets too little respect given its long service to mankind." (The Dallas Morning News)
"In exacting historical and scientific detail, Lawler reveals how the reliable crow of the cock, along with his mate’s prodigious egg-laying abilities, allowed chickens to become 'the world’s most ubiquitous bird.'” (MacLean's)
"Andrew Lawler’s Why Did the Chicken Cross the World…[details] one surprising fact after another that ultimately reveal a grand truth: that chickens are everywhere and are inextricably linked to the emergence and maintenance of human civilization.… Lawler’s book goes a long way toward restoring chickens to their respected position within human history and our modern world. Both chickens and people will benefit as a result." (Science Magazine)
“Lawler chronicles the impossible journey of the chicken through history. From its roots as a secretive jungle fowl in the wilderness of Southeast Asia millennia ago, the bird has spread across all nations and cultures. But now agricultural science has turned the chicken into a mass-produced factory animal, bred and housed in horrendous assembly-line conditions to provide protein to millions of people. Endlessly fascinating, endlessly heartbreaking.” (Tim Gallagher, Editor-in-Chief, Living Bird and author of Imperial Dreams )
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Product details
- ASIN : B00IWTWPY0
- Publisher : Atria Books; Reprint edition (December 2, 2014)
- Publication date : December 2, 2014
- Language : English
- File size : 3600 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 337 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,104,441 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #247 in Animal Husbandry (Kindle Store)
- #1,446 in Animal Husbandry (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Andrew Lawler is author of three books, Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World's Most Contested City, published in November 2021; The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke, a national bestseller, and the widely acclaimed Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization. A long-time journalist, he has covered the impact of war on the ancient heritage of Iraq and Afghanistan, the battle over Confederate statues, and archaeological discoveries on six continents. A contributing writer for Science and Archaeology magazines, his byline has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and many others, and his work has been featured several times in The Best of Science and Nature Writing. For more, see www.andrewlawler.com
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A friend was reading this on vacation, and kept giving me teasers as we met for lunch, "We are looking at chicken DNA now," or, "We just started discussing the cock", he'd deadpan, all superior and all.
So of course, I ordered my copy (and one for another friend), and it was waiting me when I returned from that vacation.
It's been one of those books I read for 15 minutes before sleep, each little section informative, often amusing, and always engaging. How did you do it, Andrew Lawler? This is a book about chickens. Even my neighbors who keep chickens could not imagine an engrossing book about CHICKENS.
Yet, here it is...that one book that I didn't believe could exist, and once discovering that it did, had to buy and read.
Learning the tale of their royal status, their eventual migration to every single part of the world, and their long relationship with humans, I fell in love with these two-legged fowl. Chickens. The Red Jungle Fowl, The Harbinger of Civilization.
The journey of the chicken started in South and Southeast Asia with the red junglefowl, in which farmers likely tolerated this bird's presence on their farms because it didn't eat seeds but instead ate insects and weeds at c.5000BCE. China seemed to have domesticated these landfowls early at c.3000BCE. These same landfowls then were shipped to ancient Sumeria (in present-day Iraq), which was very advanced for its time, where the birds became exotic animals at c.2000BCE. There, a big acceptance of this bird likely then came when the rooster and its crowing became a symbol of power and influence in the Middle East. However, it was not long (from the Middle East to India) before chickens were discovered as an easy source of food (both meat and eggs), for the easy ability to live with humans, and as warning beacons when danger is coming, very shortly after c.2000BCE. Chickens soon spread to Europe in the West and then to the rest of Asia and then Polynesia in the East through trade and presentation. Chickens later came with the first Europeans into Latin America in the 1500sCE and then into the United States in the early-1600sCE, which started their full cementing of worldwide distribution.
Chicken eggs and meat offer so much protein and nutrients. Chickens and their eggs provided some of the easier-obtainable food for areas, struggling with hunger or famine, in various times and places. The ancient Greeks and Romans most certainly had many uses for chickens (both as poultry and as sacred animals), and they found that chickens were easy to keep. The Romans gave chickens to faraway lands, such as England. Chickens and eggs for consumption declined after the fall of Rome. However, in medieval monasteries, the Rule of St. Benedict forbade four-legged-animal consumption during fasting (which occurred a lot in those days), leading to a slight rebounding in the chicken as poultry. Medieval Europe continued to see chickens as poultry (and they were relatively inexpensive in medieval England for instance), but they were one of many different landfowl and waterfowl species for this use. Ships and later railroads helped distribute chickens faster and farther throughout the world, since domestic chickens require a rather little space, which eased their transport. The 1800sCE was when egg incubation became much more available in Europe and the United States, leading to a much more massive production of eggs and hatching chicks (though egg incubation in Egypt was known centuries earlier). KFC, founded by Col. Harland Sanders (1890-1980), most certainly has become a worldwide fast-food restaurant, though it is African-Americans who deserve credit for the initial promotion of fried chicken.
Then, there are medicinal uses for the chickens. Chicken meat contains the amino acid cysteine, which is used to help treat bronchitis. Rooster combs contain hyaluronan, which can help treat arthritis in racehorses. For a long time (though recently ended), chicken eggs helped develop flu vaccines. Let's also not forget how chicken soup and chicken broth proved itself time and time again to help us all feel better when we felt ill. The domestic chickens can still eat insects and weeds (unlike other "farm/barnyard" animals like pigs that can eat anything that humans eat), also adding to humans' benefit because chickens also eat insects that can spread disease to humans too.
The principal author also talks about the strong possibility of a pre-Columbian Polynesian visit to South America and there are chicken bones on the Arauco Peninsula on the west coast of Chile. Chickens, being popular among Polynesians, also found their way across the Pacific Ocean; and these chicken bones in Chile date to c.1350CE. I believe that there was this pre-Columbian visitation to South America, but any potential human colony failed to materialize, since there are no other compelling, smoking-gun evidence besides the chicken bones. However, it just goes to show that when it came to human migration in more recent millennia, chickens almost always came with them. There is also some evidence that at least some Polynesian chickens survived on South America before Columbus as well.
I don't necessarily want to voice an opinion, but chickens (the roosters) were often used for cockfighting competitions in which one rooster dies in the fight. Though this matching is something of the past within most places of the world now, this saddened me to hear this. What's also saddening is that within the early-1900sCE in the West, chickens became the butt of jokes and insults, citing what initially appeared to be low intelligence in these birds. Nothing can be further from the truth. In this book, you will learn that neuroscientist Giorgio Vallortigara from Italy found that chickens can recognize faces of humans and other chickens, retain memory, and even have some mathematical perception, even as baby chicks. Chickens are in fact quite smart animals. Author L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) wrote of a hen, who accompanied Dorothy Gale to Oz, named Billina in the third book of Baum's ever-famous Oz saga. Billina can talk in Oz, and is smart and helpful.
Overall the book is a great chicken history book. The only thing is that it would have been nice to include pictures as the book is completely text all throughout, save the book jacket. Yet, for those who want to learn more about how the chicken "crossed the world", this book is a great source of learning. You also may start appreciating chickens as more than a source of food like I do, but I still like my eggs (from free-range chickens, of course) scrambled!
I now shop at Whole Foods and buy the Joyce Farm chickens.They are raised in a healthier environment and without all the chemicals. The French are passionate about their food chain and I prefer the European culinary choices. I highly recommend this well researched and enrapturing book!






