The Potato: The Story of How a Vegetable Changed History: Amazon.co.uk: Larry Zuckerman: Books

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Following the potato from its early cultivation in 16th-century South America to its 20th-century marriage to battered fish, this social history covers developments in agriculture, class, diet, politics, economics, and technology.

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4 Reviews

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1.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Flawed History of the potato, 12 Jan 2001

By	madcap2@appleonline.net (Derry, Ireland) - See all my reviews

Larry Zuckerman's book on the potato and how this vegetable changed history is a welcome addition to the library of anyone interested in history of this fascinating tuber. I really, really wanted to like this book. However, its content felt light and repetitive. Even worse the style of the writing was woolly in the manner of an undergraduate essay. There was also a hint of anti Irish feeling about much of the material to do with Ireland. Not an uncommon thing when one thinks how much time the writer must have spent immersed in the heavily biased English writings about the poor ignorant Irish peasants. In this the writer is a victim of slanted historical source material, however, the books editor has much to answer for. The book is also peppered with strangely contradictory sentences such as why the Irish Catholics did not have horses which "offered refined pleasures like hunting and visiting neighbours in a carriage" while a few pages on he refers to the crushing Penal Laws which denied Catholics the right to a profession or to own almost anything of value, which incidentally, Mr. Zuckerman, included a horse above a very lowly value. No matter how hard or intelligently a Catholic worked he found it almost impossible to gather wealth or land in Ireland. Instead Mr. Zuckerman engages us with talk of loopholes about "when Protestants 'claimed' Catholic property and then secretly returned it".

If I seem negative about this book I apologise. There are fascinating chapters. Particularly those that deal with the French and American experience of the potato. The writer seems more at ease with this material and it is a more informative and enjoyable read. However, the Chapter on fish and chips is a disappointment, too light and again too undergraduate.

I would have liked more information on the potato types themselves. Vague references to varieties such as the 'Apple' of Famine Ireland did little to inform me. I would have been engaged by information about how the potato breeders transformed the initially strange, small, weirdly-shaped things that came from under the ground to the round large attractive apples of the earth that we now are used to seeing. Also the book's lack of pictures or illustrations - with the exception of a few pretty useless maps - was deplorable. The potato as I am sure the author would agree is a most beautiful and photogenic subject.

I can recommend this book as a useful source of research, good for dipping into, but it is far from the definitive or well written book for which I had been hoping. But thank you Mr. Zuckerman for starting the ball rolling and your obvious interest in and love for the potato.

Hugh McDaid

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars No bangers in this mash, 24 Oct 2000

By A Customer

What a waste! Zuckerman could have written a fascinating volume about a vegetable that undoubtedly DID have a profound inflence on the world. But this book starts way too fast and promptly goes nowhere. Barely five pages cover the origins of the potato in the Andes and the use of it by the Incas and Aymara Indians. It then becomes repetitive to the point of brain death. Endless, aching descriptions of 18th century Irish huts and poverty statistics consume us. Glimmers of hope stud each chapter but are cast aside as we again become engulfed in detail and irrelevance.

I failed to see how much of the the prose (sadly there is no guiding storyline or premise) related to the title of the book. Perhaps a more appropriate title would have been "An examination of the economic and social conditions of Ireland in the eighteenth century".

Zuckerman (obviously a thorough and conscientious researcher) is guilty of failing to see the field for the roots and consequently the book loses its way.

I bought this book expecting something along the lines of "Cod - biography of a fish" or "Tulip". An intriguing and well written introduction (the best bit of the book by far) raised expectations that were never fulfilled. I'm sorry to say I have yet to drag myself through the final sixty pages.

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing to the extreme, 27 Sep 2000

By A Customer

From basic sentence structure to the logical presentation of research findings, "The Potato" is an appallingly written book. The title of the US version contains the subtitle "How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World." Zuckerman, however, fails to string together any such argument. Numerous facts, however interesting on their own, are so poorly presented that their effect on the reader is lost. Unfortunately my need to finish a book once started in this instance led to a most unpleasant experience. Surely there is a potato book out there more worthy of the subject matter.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Boring, bland, watery mash
Poor - no grand themes, no uniting ideas - its just turgid. There is no attempt to put the potato into the wider context of social and political change over the period covered... Read more

Published on 19 Oct 2000 by M. Hutchinson

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The Potato: The Story of How a Vegetable Changed History (Paperback)

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