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Title details for Spices and Spuds by Andy Warner - Available

Spices and Spuds

How Plants Made Our World

by Andy Warner
ebook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
From New York Times bestselling author Andy Warner comes a highly entertaining, informative graphic novel that traces our ever-evolving relationship with plants through time.
Did you know that plants helped shape our modern world?
It may sound ridiculous, but empires have risen and fallen because of stuff you’d find in your grocery store’s vegetable aisle. Through wars, famine, prosperity, and more, every aspect of our lives and livelihoods has something to do with plants!
Whether or not you notice them, plants are as central to our day-to-day lives as a bowl of rice or a plate of pasta, and they have shaped our history the same way a gardener trims a topiary.
Did you know that a pepper blockade led to the Age of Exploration? How about that huge wheat barges once kept Rome running with free bread? Or that whole wars were fought over tea? Get ready to follow corn’s weird journey from the floating fields of the Aztec emperors to the glossy shine on this book’s cover. 
 
Andy Warner sifts through the roots and leaves of our long, complicated history with the earth's original green resources in this hilarious, fact-filled follow-up to Andy Warner's Oddball Histories: Pests and Pets. 

  • Creators

  • Series

    Andy Warner's Oddball Histories

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 5, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780316498258
    Kindle restrictions

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      September 15, 2024
      An informative and eye-opening explanation of the impact plants have had on our lives. "This very moment is a turning point in the relationship between people, plants, and everything," Warner writes, summing up the central concept of this nonfiction graphic offering. He offers overviews of 10 agricultural products--wood, wheat, corn, rice, peppers, sugar, potatoes, tea, tulips, and cotton--and describes the ways they've shaped history, culture, and diet over time. Interesting facts and bits of trivia spanning prehistory to the present day will engage and inform readers. Alongside the triumphs, Warner doesn't shy from presenting the negative effects of the vulnerability of monocultures, people's quest for wealth and power (e.g., the colonization of Indigenous nations, enslavement of African people, and starvation caused by Hitler's Hunger Plan), and more. Repetition of the tongue-in-cheek line "This seems like something we can just sustain forever, right?" drives home the point that the "relationship between people and plants, and how we changed each other" is dynamic and constantly in flux. The book can be read cover to cover or dipped into; each section works as a self-contained story. The colorful, detail-filled illustrations and chatty, conversational tone are welcoming. Fans of the You Wouldn't Want To Be graphic nonfiction history series and similar offerings will immediately be drawn in. A concise overview of a complex and fascinating history presented in a digestible visual medium. (index)(Graphic nonfiction. 9-12)

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
Kindle restrictions

subjects

Languages

  • English

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