Empires of Food

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For thousands of years we have grown, cooked and traded food, and over that time much has changed. Where once we subsisted on gritty, bland grains, we now enjoy culinary creations and epicurean delights made with vegetables from the New World, fish trawled from the deep sea, and flavoured with spices from the Orient. But how did we make that change from eating for survival to the innovations of modern cuisine? How has food helped to shape our culture? And what will happen when global warming and peak oil have their inevitable effect on agriculture? Empires of Food is an authoritative exploration of the innumerable ways that food has changed the course of history. The earliest cities, after all, were founded on the creation and exchange of food surpluses, and since then trade routes of ever greater sophistication have developed. We've built complex societies by shunting corn and wheat and rice along rivers, up deforested hillsides, and into the stockpots of history. But we cannot go on forever. As Evan D. G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas compellingly show, the abundance that we all enjoy comes at a price, and unless we think of a more sustainable way to grow, eat and enjoy food, we may find that our civilization reaches its best before date.

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Evan D. G. Fraser teaches at the University of Leeds and does research on farming and the environment. He has first-hand experience with food production in a range of settings, including the UK, Thailand, Belize, British Columbia, and Ontario, and has published many scholarly research articles and book chapters, as well as policy briefs on environmental issues for senior politicians. He lives in the Yorkshire Dales with his wife and three children. Andrew Rimas is a journalist in the Boston area. He is the managing editor at the Improper Bostonian Magazine and has worked as an associate editor and staff writer at Boston magazine. His work has also frequently appeared in The Boston Globe, as well as the Boston Globe magazine, the Ottawa Citizen and other publications. Along with Evan D. G. Fraser, he is the co-author of Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World.