Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent
By John Reader

From The New Yorker

This enjoyably meandering history looks at the potato as a plant of paradox. It has been revered as an aphrodisiac and feared as a cause of leprosy. Populations rise dramatically wherever it is introduced, but reliance on it “ensnares more people in poverty than it lifts out.” Reader traces the evolution of the potato from poisonous Andean weed to global staple, offering adept disquisitions on whatever captures his attention: the mysterious origins of agriculture, the economic history of Peru, the domestic arrangements of the Irish. There are glimpses of the Reign of Terror, when the ornamental gardens of the Tuileries Palace were planted with potatoes, and the Great Potato Boom of 1903 and 1904, when an investment bubble grew as a result of false claims made for a potato strain known as Eldorado. This is a story of invisible systems and unintended consequences, concerned with how the New World transformed the Old. Copyright ©2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

http://www.amazon.com/Potato-Propitious-Esculent-John-Reader/dp/0300141092/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274545997&sr=1-3

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