Civil Eats

Just twenty years after humans cease to exist, our vegetable gardens will have reverted back to “unpalatable wild strains.” So envisions Alan Weisman in The World Without Us, a reminder that the history of food has run in parallel to human development. Put another way by Tom Standage, “The story of the adoption of agriculture is the tale of how ancient engineers developed powerful new tools that made civilization itself possible. In the process, mankind changed plants, and those plants in turn transformed mankind.” This course is the focus of An Edible History of Humanity, his account of how food has influenced world history. Read More