Propitious Esculent: The Potato in World History by John Reader Search Amazon for other books by or about John Reader. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

The potato, according to author John Reader, may well be the most successful vegetable in the world. Naturally productive and nutritious, potato growing has persisted in every country where it has ever been tried and it is grown in more countries than any other food crop on the planet (China, by the way, is now the world's largest producer of potatoes and its largest consumer). Potatoes--suitably cross-bred and treated--will grow in more or less any conditions, no matter how seemingly unsuitable in terms of weather conditions or altitude. People can live quite healthy lives on potatoes alone, especially if a little salt or milk is available to mash them and for extended periods of time. Since the edible part of the plant is a tuber, rather than a root or any other part, a large proportion of the total biomass (75%) can be eaten, while the tubers have the capacity to be safely stored for almost unprecedented lengths of time. The tubers themselves are planted out as clones, so they retain genetic characteristics across many generations. This all seems quite far away from the origin of the species, which is in the Andes Mountains where various species have been cultivated by local people who have been forced as a result of class-based economic warfare to live higher up the mountain slopes than they would otherwise have preferred. Many of the original, wild species of potatoes are poisonous and otherwise unprepossessing in appearance, taste, and other important characteristics. When the potatoes were first discovered by European imperialists, their potential was not at first apparent but, within a few decades, potatoes had become the staple food in many parts of Europe. Indeed, so successful were the potatoes that, according to the author, they ended up enslaving the people who had come to depend on them and when disease struck, as it did most famously in Ireland but also in the rest of the world, disaster was certain to strike.

Reader provides an interesting account of the progress of the potato from South America across the world, largely introduced by Europeans who understood their value and prepared to grow them wherever they went, to the great benefit of course of whichever indigenous people happened to be living in the land. His descriptions of different locations are interesting and useful: the Andes, Ireland, Papua New Guinea, and China are all talked about and the role of the potato in economic and social changes introduced. However, the potato itself is rarely central to these descriptions, since it is not really made clear whether an alternative to the potato could have fulfilled the role it did in that change. Large issues such as the nature of landscape change and cultural impacts are very lightly touched upon if at all and the ways in which potatoes are prepared and eaten and the changes this might have wrought in terms of people's lives are little considered.

The book is quite readable and coherent but feels like it could have been developed further to provide an even better overall narrative. There are similarities with other books which aim to be popular histories and which tend to be follow-ups to more or less unrelated books previously produced by the author who is seeking to maximise the value of already completed research and its attendant travel and research. Still, for a good, solid introduction to the vegetable which changed the lives of so many millions of people, this is recommended.