I picked up Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations by Evan Fraser and Andrew Rimas while randomly browsing a book store. It's been on the shelf for couple of years and so finally picked it up. A while back I saw a Hollywood movie called Push, in which certain characters in the story are able to instill (or "push") memories into other people's minds, making them truly believe with vivid recollection a life, family, friends they had, which in reality they never did. That movie didn't do well in the box office. Reason is that while the concept is brilliant, execution wasn't that good. I'd put this book on that category. :-)
The idea behind this book is to trace the rise and fall of civilizations through the lens of food. Authors argue that for thousands of years in different parts of the world, people got together, learned to cultivate plants, then went around clearing forests to grow plants & animals in large quantities to generate food to sustain raising population of a society. But they invariably paid no attention to soil erosion, debilitation of soil nutrients,sustainability through crop rotation. This made the system ripe for a collapse that invariably occurred when a natural calamity, as in failing monsoon or changes in temperatures, crashed agriculture for an year or two resulting in famine that wipes off the civilization. While other rise and fall of civilization analyses might have left out food altogether, this analysis seems to swing the pendulum to the other end, over simplifying the cause and effect.
The authors have touched upon Sumerian, Han, European medieval societies to paint a pan-global story canvas. They have also used a sixteenth century businessman named Francesco Carletti, who has filled a lot of diaries detailing his foodie adventures around the world that lasted several years, as a tool to explore how various parts of the worlds he visited in his life time functioned, grew food, fed its population and managed their societies. But the language and flow doesn't seem to work consistently as they seem to keep getting stuck in some historic (often inaccurate) detail that doesn't move the book forward, while the the authors are trying to earn their credentials in being funny, authentic, etc. There are certainly parts that are quite interesting. The business of digging up millions of tons of guano (bird poop) in the Lobos Islands of Peru and exporting it around the world as plant fertilizer and nation states going to war with each other to protect this business is one such example. There were also descriptions of swash buckling 19th century adventures in trying to protect a boat full of spices, exporting ice cut out from New England's frozen wintry lakes to places as far away as Calcutta in India by carrying them in ships that was new(s) to me. Imagine preserving ice in pre-refrigeration days on ships going half way around the globe! While such big canvas paintings are interesting, if they had come together in a crisp cogent narrative, it would have been a neat exposition.
Towards the end authors discuss our current model of agriculture where large corporations grow all the food (plants and animals) needed to feed the still burgeoning population of the planet with ruthless efficiency without paying much attention to sustainability, crop rotation, agriculture's extreme dependency on fossil fuels and such. But they don't have any clear solution. They vaguely suggest that the Locavore, CSA, and Slow Food movements, if complimented properly with industrial food production (which is needed to support the size of our current population), can prevent the imminent collapse we are facing. If you pick up the book, you can skim the middle 1/3rd that do drag considerably and enjoy the last 1/3rd that is much more readable. :-)
Picked up Quirkology: How we discover the big truths in small things by Richard Wiseman next. Much more down to earth book on human behavior and psychology that seems to be a fun read.
-sundar.
