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Paperback The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World Book

ISBN: 0865475784

ISBN13: 9780865475786

The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World

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Format: Paperback

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Book Overview

The Potato tells the story of how a humble vegetable, once regarded as trash food, had as revolutionary an impact on Western history as the railroad or the automobile. Using Ireland, England, France, and the United States as examples, Larry Zuckerman shows how daily life from the 1770s until World War I would have been unrecognizable-perhaps impossible-without the potato, which functioned as fast food, famine insurance, fuel and labor saver, budget stretcher, and bank loan, as well as delicacy. Drawing on personal diaries, contemporaneous newspaper accounts, and other primary sources, this is popular social history at its liveliest and most illuminating.

Customer Reviews

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Rated 4 stars
The Humble Spud in History

With a lively literary style, journalist Larry Zuckerman explains the history and importance of the lowly tuber, from its thirteen-thousand-year origin on the high Andean plateaus to its sixteenth-century discovery by Spaniards down to the beginning of World War I. Zuckerman chronicles just four countries in his treatise about the spud, but these countries: France, England, Ireland, and the United States are, he says, representative...

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Rated 5 stars
Both great and disappointing

While i really liked this book and found it full of useful information and insightful analysis, i also found the book very disappointing.I was disappointed by his treatment of the pre-Colombian aspects of the potato's history. We find out little about the origins of the potato, its importance and uses in pre-Colombian South America, etc. (They are part of the Western World) We also find little about the potato itself...

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Rated 5 stars
The lowly spud?

Nothing could be more boring than the potato. Well maybe not. Larry Zuckerman in the, Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World takes the lowly tuber to new heights. Being of Irish and Anglo Irish extraction, the great famine has always struck a chord with me. I've read Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett which brings home the horror of the famine but I've always been a bit puzzled about it. It is hard living in the...

2Report

Rated 5 stars
clever, poignant and educational

Never would I have guessed, before discovering Larry Zuckerman's book, that I could be so moved to laugh and learn while reading about a vegetable. His personal, palatable presentation of social history enlightened me with a truer understanding of my Irish roots(!), as much as it entertained.

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Rated 5 stars
#2 fast food choice USA market

Potato is so versatile, It is #2 add-on at Fest Food chains, & superbly carved by chefs also. Should be supplemental reading all culinary school students... Will sell well in Idaho

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