![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In the case of the potato, another teleological study (“The Potato,” by Larry Zuckerman) appeared a decade ago, and a chapter was devoted to it in Michael Pollan’s excellent “Botany of Desire.” That Reader should feel impelled to contribute to the genre shows true devotion. “Why should it be absurd to suggest that the potato changed world history?” John Reader asks in “Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent.” If the claim seems odd to those for whom the tuber is little more than a mainstay of comfort foods, Reader argues that its low-key ubiquity is an indication of just how central the potato is to our lives.īeginning with evidence of 12,500-year-old domesticated potatoes at an archaeological site in Chile, moving to the Inca Empire and on to Renaissance Europe, Reader shows how potatoes (which today are the world’s fourth-largest food crop) have tipped the balance of subsistence.īy now virtually every staple - salt, bread and sugar, among others - has had a book devoted to it. ![]()
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