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Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
A gripping biological detective story that uncovers the myth, mystery, and endangered fate of the world's most humble fruit
To most people, a banana is a banana: a simple yellow fruit. Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. In others parts of the world, bananas are what keep millions of people alive. But for all its ubiquity, the banana is surprisingly mysterious; nobody knows how bananas evolved or exactly where they originated. Rich cultural lore surrounds the fruit: In ancient translations of the Bible, the 'apple' consumed by Eve is actually a banana (it makes sense, doesn't it?). Entire Central American nations have been said to rise and fall over the banana.
But the biggest mystery about the banana today is whether it will survive. A seedless fruit with a unique reproductive system, every banana is a genetic duplicate of the next, and therefore susceptible to the same blights. Today's yellow banana, the Cavendish, is increasingly threatened by such a blight -- and there's no cure in sight.
Banana combines a pop-science journey around the globe, a fascinating tale of an iconic American business enterprise, and a look into the alternately tragic and hilarious banana subculture (one does exist) -- ultimately taking us to the high-tech labs where new bananas are literally being built in test tubes, in a race to save the world's most beloved fruit.
To most people, a banana is a banana: a simple yellow fruit. Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. In others parts of the world, bananas are what keep millions of people alive. But for all its ubiquity, the banana is surprisingly mysterious; nobody knows how bananas evolved or exactly where they originated. Rich cultural lore surrounds the fruit: In ancient translations of the Bible, the 'apple' consumed by Eve is actually a banana (it makes sense, doesn't it?). Entire Central American nations have been said to rise and fall over the banana.
But the biggest mystery about the banana today is whether it will survive. A seedless fruit with a unique reproductive system, every banana is a genetic duplicate of the next, and therefore susceptible to the same blights. Today's yellow banana, the Cavendish, is increasingly threatened by such a blight -- and there's no cure in sight.
Banana combines a pop-science journey around the globe, a fascinating tale of an iconic American business enterprise, and a look into the alternately tragic and hilarious banana subculture (one does exist) -- ultimately taking us to the high-tech labs where new bananas are literally being built in test tubes, in a race to save the world's most beloved fruit.
281 pages, Hardcover
First published December 27, 2007
317 people are currently reading
15119 people want to read
About the author
Dan Koeppel
11 books29 followersDan Koeppel is a well-known outdoors, nature, and adventure writer who has written for the New York Times Magazine, Outside, Audubon, Popular Science, and National Geographic Adventure, where he is a contributing editor. Koeppel has also appeared on CNN and Good Morning America, and is a former commentator for Public Radio International's Marketplace.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 674 reviews
October 20, 2022
Cruel enemies are stalking the world’s bananas and have been for decades. Who knew? Apparently Dan Koeppel. He has tracked not only the diseases that wiped out the every-day, Gros Michel, banana in the 1930s, but has an eye out for the Panama disease that is wiping out the Cavendish banana, that is, the one that we see today in every supermarket and fruit stand. There is yet another mortal enemy to the banana in the world, called Sigatoka. And the up and coming threat is from a disease called Bunchy Top, which sounds more like a character from Sesame Street, or Carrot Top’s heftier cousin, than a lethal virus. No one knows what effect it might have on our ability to add some slices of the world’s favorite fruit and fourth largest crop to our morning cereal.
image from the NY Times - by Vincent Tullo
There is a lot to learn about the impact of the banana on the world. And I would bet that all, or surely most of it, is in this book. Banana was a fun, educational and often surprising read. There is a lot of information to take in, and while you may know some of the info here, it is certain that there is a bunch you do not. Did you know that the banana tree isn’t properly a tree, but a very large herb? Neither did I. Or that the bananas we eat are considered berries? Say it ain’t so.
Dan Koeppel - image from the NY times
How about the notion that the banana was the fruit referred to in ancient texts about the Garden of Eden. The climate in the Fertile Crescent was not conducive to apples. And there is some softness in the translations of ancient writings. The forbidden fruit was called a fig, which is also what the banana was called. And really, doesn’t it seem a more fitting shape for the job? Which makes it all the more ironic that bananas are essentially asexual. They do not breed. The fruit we eat today came from cloned plants. Mass-consumption bananas has always come from plants that do not propagate themselves, but require man’s intervention.
There is a hybrid grown in Asia that is high in beta carotene, promising an easier way to get vitamin A into picky children. Koeppel even traces the linguistic trail of the banana as it made its way around the world, noting similarities in local names for the fruit in diverse languages.
He peels back the layers of time to reveal the banana’s place in history. Latin America is prime here, with many tales of corrupt agricultural corporations, such as United Fruit (now Chiquita) and their machinations against local governments. He also points out that many technological advances arose from the need to transport this perishable product long distances in a short time.
So you get the idea, lots of info about something most of us never gave, well, a fig about. It is a fun read and you will find yourself saying (or thinking, if you don’t want to make the person next to you on the subway slowly edge away) “I did not know that.” Given that there are existential threats abroad to the common banana, and that we are not yet ready with a cross-bred version that is resistant to those threats, we should probably do what we can to appreciate the banana before it…um…splits.
============================EXTRA STUFF
March 14, 2017 - This article from Wired is worth checking out - Humans Made the Banana Perfect—But Soon, It’ll Be Gone - by Rob Dunn
August 4, 2017 - NY Times - Annie Correal pulls back the veil that has long hidden the banana's journey from freighter to table - The Secret Life of the City Banana. Don't let this article slip past.
June 1, 2018 - (but first seen 3/17/19) - Aeon - Bananas have died out once before – don’t let it happen again - by Jackie Turner
image from the NY Times - by Vincent Tullo
There is a lot to learn about the impact of the banana on the world. And I would bet that all, or surely most of it, is in this book. Banana was a fun, educational and often surprising read. There is a lot of information to take in, and while you may know some of the info here, it is certain that there is a bunch you do not. Did you know that the banana tree isn’t properly a tree, but a very large herb? Neither did I. Or that the bananas we eat are considered berries? Say it ain’t so.
Dan Koeppel - image from the NY times
How about the notion that the banana was the fruit referred to in ancient texts about the Garden of Eden. The climate in the Fertile Crescent was not conducive to apples. And there is some softness in the translations of ancient writings. The forbidden fruit was called a fig, which is also what the banana was called. And really, doesn’t it seem a more fitting shape for the job? Which makes it all the more ironic that bananas are essentially asexual. They do not breed. The fruit we eat today came from cloned plants. Mass-consumption bananas has always come from plants that do not propagate themselves, but require man’s intervention.
There is a hybrid grown in Asia that is high in beta carotene, promising an easier way to get vitamin A into picky children. Koeppel even traces the linguistic trail of the banana as it made its way around the world, noting similarities in local names for the fruit in diverse languages.
He peels back the layers of time to reveal the banana’s place in history. Latin America is prime here, with many tales of corrupt agricultural corporations, such as United Fruit (now Chiquita) and their machinations against local governments. He also points out that many technological advances arose from the need to transport this perishable product long distances in a short time.
So you get the idea, lots of info about something most of us never gave, well, a fig about. It is a fun read and you will find yourself saying (or thinking, if you don’t want to make the person next to you on the subway slowly edge away) “I did not know that.” Given that there are existential threats abroad to the common banana, and that we are not yet ready with a cross-bred version that is resistant to those threats, we should probably do what we can to appreciate the banana before it…um…splits.
============================EXTRA STUFF
March 14, 2017 - This article from Wired is worth checking out - Humans Made the Banana Perfect—But Soon, It’ll Be Gone - by Rob Dunn
August 4, 2017 - NY Times - Annie Correal pulls back the veil that has long hidden the banana's journey from freighter to table - The Secret Life of the City Banana. Don't let this article slip past.
June 1, 2018 - (but first seen 3/17/19) - Aeon - Bananas have died out once before – don’t let it happen again - by Jackie Turner
March 1, 2025
I usually love books like this that deep dive on one specific topic and blow my mind with all sorts of interesting facts, connecting dots I didn't even know were there. This one was an utter fail. I was really bored from start to finish. Koeppel tried really hard to dial up the drama, the political unrest, the corporate corruption, the personal crises. And yet, it was all still somehow lackluster, and it made me care less about bananas than ever. LOL.
The only thing I thought was interesting was Koeppel pointing out that the fruit Adam and Eve ate was probably closer to a banana than an apple, as is depicted in art throughout the centuries. I don't know how to translate the original text, and I don't actually even know what the original language it was written in, but I know it's only been human imagination filling in the blanks as to what the fruit from the tree of knowledge or good and evil looked or tasted like since none of us have ever been to the Garden of Eden. However, given they found their sexual awakening after eating of the fruit, I think it's funny and far more apropos that it might've been a phallic fruit.
Otherwise, the banana has certainly been a very well-traveled fruit that's set roots down all over the world, has been a hot commodity now and again, and been witness to a lot of history and still is. Someday, maybe if I'm lucky enough, maybe I'll get a chance to try out every kind of banana there is, because there are apparently quite a lot.
The only thing I thought was interesting was Koeppel pointing out that the fruit Adam and Eve ate was probably closer to a banana than an apple, as is depicted in art throughout the centuries. I don't know how to translate the original text, and I don't actually even know what the original language it was written in, but I know it's only been human imagination filling in the blanks as to what the fruit from the tree of knowledge or good and evil looked or tasted like since none of us have ever been to the Garden of Eden. However, given they found their sexual awakening after eating of the fruit, I think it's funny and far more apropos that it might've been a phallic fruit.
Otherwise, the banana has certainly been a very well-traveled fruit that's set roots down all over the world, has been a hot commodity now and again, and been witness to a lot of history and still is. Someday, maybe if I'm lucky enough, maybe I'll get a chance to try out every kind of banana there is, because there are apparently quite a lot.
April 27, 2024
Chiquita Calls in Sick
A fast-paced, well-researched book that peels back the mystery and gives you the history. OK ! BANANA is the best of the bunch. Sorry, I will avoid puns from now on. Other books may provide more intimate looks at the machinations of the big fruit companies, or American interventions in Central America. Still others may describe the biology of this popular yellow fruit in more detail. I believe this one combines everything in one easy-to-read package. It could be the "Beautiful Swimmers" (Chesapeake crabs) of bananas. I learned a lot, I enjoyed myself, and every time I closed the book I had this inexplicable desire to eat a banana ! Rather hasty editing produced a list of 16 factual errors that I was able to detect. Not being a banana maven (before now), I suspect I might have missed more. But no worries, Koeppel did not write BANANA by sitting in a library, he looked into things on his own. He's constructed a fascinating tale, even a suspenseful one. After a banana obsession for a couple years, he must have turned a mellow yellow.
Koeppel relates the long history of the banana, starting with the very probable idea that the original fruit in the Garden of Eden would have been a banana, not an apple. He rightly points out that in some parts of the world, especially East Africa, bananas are a lot more than a snack or a topping---they are life itself. When we arrive at the 19th century and the beginning of large scale plantations and exporting for the American (and European) markets, politics and plant breeding enter the scene. How to develop a fruit that can be exported easily without being damaged and without rotting on the way ? Then, soon enough, diseases get into the picture. Actually, the main theme of the book, sometimes pushed into the background, is that "something is rotten in Denmark", or in this case, perhaps Honduras. A disease is killing bananas all around the world, and the one variety we've chosen as "the" banana is threatened. How could this happen ? What are we doing about it ? Why is this a special problem for bananas? All these questions will be answered, though a cure for the disease has not been found yet. For an extremely interesting read about a topic you've doubtless never thought about as you picked up a few bananas from your local supermarket or grocery shop, or sliced some of the same onto your corn flakes, I strongly recommend Koeppel's yellow-tinted tome. One of the best books I've read in quite a while.
A fast-paced, well-researched book that peels back the mystery and gives you the history. OK ! BANANA is the best of the bunch. Sorry, I will avoid puns from now on. Other books may provide more intimate looks at the machinations of the big fruit companies, or American interventions in Central America. Still others may describe the biology of this popular yellow fruit in more detail. I believe this one combines everything in one easy-to-read package. It could be the "Beautiful Swimmers" (Chesapeake crabs) of bananas. I learned a lot, I enjoyed myself, and every time I closed the book I had this inexplicable desire to eat a banana ! Rather hasty editing produced a list of 16 factual errors that I was able to detect. Not being a banana maven (before now), I suspect I might have missed more. But no worries, Koeppel did not write BANANA by sitting in a library, he looked into things on his own. He's constructed a fascinating tale, even a suspenseful one. After a banana obsession for a couple years, he must have turned a mellow yellow.
Koeppel relates the long history of the banana, starting with the very probable idea that the original fruit in the Garden of Eden would have been a banana, not an apple. He rightly points out that in some parts of the world, especially East Africa, bananas are a lot more than a snack or a topping---they are life itself. When we arrive at the 19th century and the beginning of large scale plantations and exporting for the American (and European) markets, politics and plant breeding enter the scene. How to develop a fruit that can be exported easily without being damaged and without rotting on the way ? Then, soon enough, diseases get into the picture. Actually, the main theme of the book, sometimes pushed into the background, is that "something is rotten in Denmark", or in this case, perhaps Honduras. A disease is killing bananas all around the world, and the one variety we've chosen as "the" banana is threatened. How could this happen ? What are we doing about it ? Why is this a special problem for bananas? All these questions will be answered, though a cure for the disease has not been found yet. For an extremely interesting read about a topic you've doubtless never thought about as you picked up a few bananas from your local supermarket or grocery shop, or sliced some of the same onto your corn flakes, I strongly recommend Koeppel's yellow-tinted tome. One of the best books I've read in quite a while.
January 5, 2009
Do you ever get to the middle of a book and think to yourself, Why on earth am I reading this? I generally manage to avoid this feeling by choosing my reading material wisely, but this one managed to slip through somehow.
Bananas. Do I care? Sort of.
I found about half of this book to be incredibly interesting. The political implications of banana production, the fact that the banana as we know it may soon cease to exist altogether, a bit of banana history - these are the parts that managed to hold my attention. The very meticulous accounts of every aspect of banana breeding and cross-breeding and growing (and on and on and on) I can do without. I admit, I had to skim through some of it, and I never skim unless I feel like I'm wasting my time.
I wont say, "do not read this book," but I will say, "do not read this book unless you are terribly interested in bananas and/or horticulture." It just wasn't my thing, and I usually get really into books about food. Ah, well.
Bananas. Do I care? Sort of.
I found about half of this book to be incredibly interesting. The political implications of banana production, the fact that the banana as we know it may soon cease to exist altogether, a bit of banana history - these are the parts that managed to hold my attention. The very meticulous accounts of every aspect of banana breeding and cross-breeding and growing (and on and on and on) I can do without. I admit, I had to skim through some of it, and I never skim unless I feel like I'm wasting my time.
I wont say, "do not read this book," but I will say, "do not read this book unless you are terribly interested in bananas and/or horticulture." It just wasn't my thing, and I usually get really into books about food. Ah, well.
August 17, 2020
Rating: 3* of five
2019 UPDATE Climate change bids fair to deprive us of a childhood icon, says this book.
One step closer to reality.
This is yet another entry in the single-subject world of non-fiction. The narrowness of focus in books such as Salt and Cod and The Book on the Bookshelf and The Pencil and Longitude seems to be an increasingly preevalent trend in publishing. I am all for it on one level, since I like delving into the abstruse and wallowing in details that leave most people I know colder than a penguin's butt in the middle of the Antarctic winter; but on another level, I want to stop these publishers before they bore again with books inadequately edited and organized.
There are three pieces to the banana...the history of humanity's first cultivated plant (modern evidence from New Guinea shows human cultivation from 9000 years ago was of bananas, but for their corms not the fingers we eat today); the politics of the modern cultivation of the banana (the term "banana republic", which I have used without thinking for 30+ years, has a very literal beginning and a scarily modern ring); and the future of humankind's most basic and widely distributed food crop (essential to survival in several parts of the world, the banana is also under threat from several pests that defy modern chemistry to abate, still less conquer, and squeamish food-o-phobes in wealthy countries oppose all modern genetic engineering that could save the survival crop of many parts of the world). These three strands are awkwardly interwoven, with no obvious guiding editorial hand to make sense of their interrelation.
It's a shame, too, because this is a huge, important topic, and the author's not inconsiderable talents are well-used in bringing the facts to light. The loss of our American favorite banana, the Cavendish, from grocery shelves will be an inconvenience at most; the fact that two major American corporations are, double-handedly (is that a word?), responsible for the spread of the blights that threaten the world crop with the complicity of the American government, should mean that we as a country are liable to find solutions to the pressing problems of food security in the places we've so screwed over. Free. But that won't happen, you can bet on that.
Back to the book...too much narrative drive is lost in the author's back-and-forth cross-cutting of the basic story. I wish someone had said, "Yo Dan...first third of the book is the banana as a plant; second third is the politics of the banana; last is the science of the plant." I wonder if that was what they tried, and the interconnections of all the information prevented its success? I somehow don't think so.
It's a good-enough book on an important topic that SHOULD cause each person who reads it some discomfort at our societal callousness and myopia. I recommend it to those most likely to be irritated by progressive politics and social liberalism. Isolationists particularly encouraged to apply!
2019 UPDATE Climate change bids fair to deprive us of a childhood icon, says this book.
One step closer to reality.
This is yet another entry in the single-subject world of non-fiction. The narrowness of focus in books such as Salt and Cod and The Book on the Bookshelf and The Pencil and Longitude seems to be an increasingly preevalent trend in publishing. I am all for it on one level, since I like delving into the abstruse and wallowing in details that leave most people I know colder than a penguin's butt in the middle of the Antarctic winter; but on another level, I want to stop these publishers before they bore again with books inadequately edited and organized.
There are three pieces to the banana...the history of humanity's first cultivated plant (modern evidence from New Guinea shows human cultivation from 9000 years ago was of bananas, but for their corms not the fingers we eat today); the politics of the modern cultivation of the banana (the term "banana republic", which I have used without thinking for 30+ years, has a very literal beginning and a scarily modern ring); and the future of humankind's most basic and widely distributed food crop (essential to survival in several parts of the world, the banana is also under threat from several pests that defy modern chemistry to abate, still less conquer, and squeamish food-o-phobes in wealthy countries oppose all modern genetic engineering that could save the survival crop of many parts of the world). These three strands are awkwardly interwoven, with no obvious guiding editorial hand to make sense of their interrelation.
It's a shame, too, because this is a huge, important topic, and the author's not inconsiderable talents are well-used in bringing the facts to light. The loss of our American favorite banana, the Cavendish, from grocery shelves will be an inconvenience at most; the fact that two major American corporations are, double-handedly (is that a word?), responsible for the spread of the blights that threaten the world crop with the complicity of the American government, should mean that we as a country are liable to find solutions to the pressing problems of food security in the places we've so screwed over. Free. But that won't happen, you can bet on that.
Back to the book...too much narrative drive is lost in the author's back-and-forth cross-cutting of the basic story. I wish someone had said, "Yo Dan...first third of the book is the banana as a plant; second third is the politics of the banana; last is the science of the plant." I wonder if that was what they tried, and the interconnections of all the information prevented its success? I somehow don't think so.
It's a good-enough book on an important topic that SHOULD cause each person who reads it some discomfort at our societal callousness and myopia. I recommend it to those most likely to be irritated by progressive politics and social liberalism. Isolationists particularly encouraged to apply!
March 11, 2011
Bananas on Bennies
I’m a big fan of “commodity histories” -- books on how everyday objects and products have become interwoven into our daily lives. It's odd that while many educated Americans know the year the Titanic sank, for example, scarcely any of them know the provenance of the items on their breakfast table – the coffee in their cup or the banana sliced onto their cornflakes. And this is a shame, really, for it’s quotidian details as much as major events that shape our lives.
It turns out that bananas have a fascinating back story. What a disappointment, then, that this book falls short of doing it justice. I’d rate Bananas two and a half stars – I enjoyed the subject matter but was often irritated at author Dan Koeppel’s manner of telling it. His book bore a curious resemblance to the Cavendish banana (that’s almost the sole variety consumed in the U.S. and Europe, by the way): a product packaged for popular consumption, a little bland and inoffensive. It’s a pity, really, for I’d love to see such a quirky subject handled with more verve, but Koeppel seemed intent on watering it down for the masses.
The book also suffers from a strange sort of bibliographic ADD: it can’t seem to focus on any subject for more than a few pages. Now I know that weaving back and forth between several narrative threads is de rigueur these days, but Koeppel goes to extremes. The 241-page central story is broken up into thirty-six chapters, some a mere three pages long. The result is an overly choppy, jittery narrative with capricious sequencing.
For example, Chapter 12, which focuses on the ambitious rise of banana entrepreneur Samuel Zemurray, is followed by a three-page exposition on Tin Pan Alley and the genesis of the song “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” Then, willy-nilly, Koeppel treats us to another short three-page discourse, this time on the spread of that bane of banana plantations, Panama disease.
Chop-chop-chop…. On and on it goes, jerking back and forth among narrative threads, some of which are only peripheral to the two major components of the story, either of which would have been a book in its own right.
These two aspects are the political and the agricultural. I was more familiar with the latter, having read an interesting article in The New Yorker in December 2010 on the spread of a devastating fungus that is jeopardizing the world’s supply of what has become a monoculture: the Cavendish banana. However, I was less familiar with the fruit’s political history, and in particular the rise of the “banana republics.” This part of the story has been dealt with in several other books, which is perhaps why the author chose to hedge his bets and include material on the efforts of banana breeders and genetic engineers to come up with a disease-resistant and marketable successor to the Cavendish banana.
I was less than enamored with Koeppel’s style, a combination of pedestrian prose and forced attempts at humor, often with a creepy confiding tone. There were some cutesy metaphors I could have done without, such as when he likens gene splicing to splicing together reels of film, producing “the best qualities of both: Rhett Butler played by Harrison Ford and Scarlet O’Hara with a cinnamon-bun hairstyle.”
Come again? Do I need that image in my mind as I slog through the details of gene splicing?
Or, for that matter, do I need this?
“I remember the first time I ever understood that the retelling of ordinary events could become magic. I a teenager, just beginning to write, searching for inspiration. I’d always loved books about other worlds – science fiction, Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan series, even old pulp novels I bought at a local junk shop. But it had only recently begun to occur to me that the greatest constructed worlds could be found in works that were considered to be ‘true’ literature. That point was made most sharply with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude…”
This is how the author leads with his arse into a discussion of the “banana massacre” in Colombia in 1928, when the United Fruit Company violently put down a strike. Now, I just have to say that there are writers who can pull this sort of indulgent reminiscence off, but Koeppel isn’t one of them.
Last, but not least, I wish Koeppel had used footnotes to cite his source material. I suppose he deemed them too “academic” for the average reader or something. Instead, his sources (both major and minor) are dropped into the narrative with an audible CLUNK! –
“Because Panama disease was permanently making fallow so much of its existing holdings, the fruit companies had a continuous need for new land, according to John Soluri, author of Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States.”
Ultimately, I have to say the reason I finished the book at all was that I began enjoying rewriting it in my head. There's some champion material here, but the writing is lackluster and the organization is downright addled.
I’m a big fan of “commodity histories” -- books on how everyday objects and products have become interwoven into our daily lives. It's odd that while many educated Americans know the year the Titanic sank, for example, scarcely any of them know the provenance of the items on their breakfast table – the coffee in their cup or the banana sliced onto their cornflakes. And this is a shame, really, for it’s quotidian details as much as major events that shape our lives.
It turns out that bananas have a fascinating back story. What a disappointment, then, that this book falls short of doing it justice. I’d rate Bananas two and a half stars – I enjoyed the subject matter but was often irritated at author Dan Koeppel’s manner of telling it. His book bore a curious resemblance to the Cavendish banana (that’s almost the sole variety consumed in the U.S. and Europe, by the way): a product packaged for popular consumption, a little bland and inoffensive. It’s a pity, really, for I’d love to see such a quirky subject handled with more verve, but Koeppel seemed intent on watering it down for the masses.
The book also suffers from a strange sort of bibliographic ADD: it can’t seem to focus on any subject for more than a few pages. Now I know that weaving back and forth between several narrative threads is de rigueur these days, but Koeppel goes to extremes. The 241-page central story is broken up into thirty-six chapters, some a mere three pages long. The result is an overly choppy, jittery narrative with capricious sequencing.
For example, Chapter 12, which focuses on the ambitious rise of banana entrepreneur Samuel Zemurray, is followed by a three-page exposition on Tin Pan Alley and the genesis of the song “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” Then, willy-nilly, Koeppel treats us to another short three-page discourse, this time on the spread of that bane of banana plantations, Panama disease.
Chop-chop-chop…. On and on it goes, jerking back and forth among narrative threads, some of which are only peripheral to the two major components of the story, either of which would have been a book in its own right.
These two aspects are the political and the agricultural. I was more familiar with the latter, having read an interesting article in The New Yorker in December 2010 on the spread of a devastating fungus that is jeopardizing the world’s supply of what has become a monoculture: the Cavendish banana. However, I was less familiar with the fruit’s political history, and in particular the rise of the “banana republics.” This part of the story has been dealt with in several other books, which is perhaps why the author chose to hedge his bets and include material on the efforts of banana breeders and genetic engineers to come up with a disease-resistant and marketable successor to the Cavendish banana.
I was less than enamored with Koeppel’s style, a combination of pedestrian prose and forced attempts at humor, often with a creepy confiding tone. There were some cutesy metaphors I could have done without, such as when he likens gene splicing to splicing together reels of film, producing “the best qualities of both: Rhett Butler played by Harrison Ford and Scarlet O’Hara with a cinnamon-bun hairstyle.”
Come again? Do I need that image in my mind as I slog through the details of gene splicing?
Or, for that matter, do I need this?
“I remember the first time I ever understood that the retelling of ordinary events could become magic. I a teenager, just beginning to write, searching for inspiration. I’d always loved books about other worlds – science fiction, Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan series, even old pulp novels I bought at a local junk shop. But it had only recently begun to occur to me that the greatest constructed worlds could be found in works that were considered to be ‘true’ literature. That point was made most sharply with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude…”
This is how the author leads with his arse into a discussion of the “banana massacre” in Colombia in 1928, when the United Fruit Company violently put down a strike. Now, I just have to say that there are writers who can pull this sort of indulgent reminiscence off, but Koeppel isn’t one of them.
Last, but not least, I wish Koeppel had used footnotes to cite his source material. I suppose he deemed them too “academic” for the average reader or something. Instead, his sources (both major and minor) are dropped into the narrative with an audible CLUNK! –
“Because Panama disease was permanently making fallow so much of its existing holdings, the fruit companies had a continuous need for new land, according to John Soluri, author of Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States.”
Ultimately, I have to say the reason I finished the book at all was that I began enjoying rewriting it in my head. There's some champion material here, but the writing is lackluster and the organization is downright addled.
February 10, 2019
Wow. This is a Feb 2019 update: I just read an article that confirms that the banana is at great risk. I thought the author of this book was trying to give a dramatic spin to his work, but apparently it’s all very serious! Here is the article: https://amp.ft.com/content/74fb67b8-2...
—
I loved looking at history through banana-colored lenses. Dan Koeppel did a really nice work here. He did a lot of research, went around the world to interview experts, and managed to write a book that focuses on the history and science of the banana. The book kept my interest quite high from beginning to end. The structure / organization is not linear at all, it would be best visualized with a firework explosion, but in a sense it works even better this way: it's like sitting down in a pub with one of the top experts on bananas, getting him completely drunk, and listening to him rant away. The result is a "narrative" that jumps around, gets distracted, goes back, has sudden moments of humor and unexpectedly moving paragraphs, but it all kind of fits together nicely. I really liked it that way. Despite the large amount of facts and trivia, the book is a light read.
The author tried to infuse this work with an overarching drama, which is "a banana blight that is tearing through banana crops worldwide". This is a fact, however there seem to be some solutions in place, and at least several alternatives. In any case, some chapters end with sentences like "this is why the banana you eat today might be the last of its kind you eat. Ever!". Hilarious! But please, go on! Bring us another one of whatever this guy is drinking!!
Koeppel spent many chapters on the history of United Fruit, the modern Chiquita. I knew it was a history of violent colonialism, but I didn't know to what extent. The history of the "banana republics" of Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, etc. is fascinating, dark and disturbing. Guatemala in particular, with the CIA-orchestrated conspiracy / coup that was very much related to United Fruit and bananas.
One minor flaw: the focus seems to be almost entirely on American bananas and their history, only a little bit on South-East Asia, and almost nothing on Africa. The book would have been more complete if it expanded a bit more on Africa and what the fruit meant for African history, too.
In the end, the author recommends us to buy fair trade bananas, to help plantation workers, and he gives us a bit more background, without pushing that agenda too much.
—
I loved looking at history through banana-colored lenses. Dan Koeppel did a really nice work here. He did a lot of research, went around the world to interview experts, and managed to write a book that focuses on the history and science of the banana. The book kept my interest quite high from beginning to end. The structure / organization is not linear at all, it would be best visualized with a firework explosion, but in a sense it works even better this way: it's like sitting down in a pub with one of the top experts on bananas, getting him completely drunk, and listening to him rant away. The result is a "narrative" that jumps around, gets distracted, goes back, has sudden moments of humor and unexpectedly moving paragraphs, but it all kind of fits together nicely. I really liked it that way. Despite the large amount of facts and trivia, the book is a light read.
The author tried to infuse this work with an overarching drama, which is "a banana blight that is tearing through banana crops worldwide". This is a fact, however there seem to be some solutions in place, and at least several alternatives. In any case, some chapters end with sentences like "this is why the banana you eat today might be the last of its kind you eat. Ever!". Hilarious! But please, go on! Bring us another one of whatever this guy is drinking!!
Koeppel spent many chapters on the history of United Fruit, the modern Chiquita. I knew it was a history of violent colonialism, but I didn't know to what extent. The history of the "banana republics" of Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, etc. is fascinating, dark and disturbing. Guatemala in particular, with the CIA-orchestrated conspiracy / coup that was very much related to United Fruit and bananas.
One minor flaw: the focus seems to be almost entirely on American bananas and their history, only a little bit on South-East Asia, and almost nothing on Africa. The book would have been more complete if it expanded a bit more on Africa and what the fruit meant for African history, too.
In the end, the author recommends us to buy fair trade bananas, to help plantation workers, and he gives us a bit more background, without pushing that agenda too much.
April 24, 2015
It's hard for me to understand people who, in their reviews, throw this book to the proverbial wolves. Some readers are disappointed that it's not narrative enough or doesn't go deep enough into the politics, and a lot of people seem frustrated with the way the book is organized. Perhaps it's not perfect, but this is clearly a thoughtfully researched, accessible and meaningful book, and one that illustrates unwaveringly and yet compassionately and without evangelical fervor, the dangers of our western corporate and agricultural practices. Yes, we have no academic tome here. Yes we have no bed time story. But Koeppel's "Banana" doesn't claim to be an in-depth history of the corrupt fruit companies and their relationships with violent regimes, nor does it claim to be a storybook. It's a work of narrative non-fiction whose aim is to guide the reader through some of the literary, sociological, political, agricultural and evolutionary history of the banana. It's well written and carefully researched and the story is a fascinating and horrifying one, and a window into the questionable human soul. We meet all sorts of intriguing characters, mainly business men and scientists, and we meet powerful blights in human and microbial form. The banana as we know it may on its way out, but there is a lot to learn from its journey and a lot to reflect on in terms of our relationship with food and money. Yasher Ko'ach Ben Koeppel for writing a book that matters.
June 20, 2023
This is a very well written, well researched, informative and interesting book. I only ate one banana during the reading of this book but boy did I appreciate it!
May 8, 2025
3.5/5 if I had a nickel for how many men committed suicide in relation to bananas I’d have two nickels… which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice
March 13, 2008
If you liked the book "Salt" you will probably find this book just as engrossing. There's more in here about corporate and pan-American politics than I expected on first hearing about the book, and I really enjoyed reading it. The reasons why bananas are threatened with global extinction despite being one of the most successful agricultural crops are fascinating, and chilling.
Koeppel does a great job of simplifying the science and getting right to the heart of the matter.
Koeppel does a great job of simplifying the science and getting right to the heart of the matter.
August 28, 2024
I definitely won't ever think about bananas the same way again, that's for sure. Not without thinking about how many nations were raised or broken or both in the growing and selling of them. I definitely won't take them for granted anymore either.
I love books like this, because even if the subject matter is as narrow as one type of fruit (though it is the most abundant fruit in the world), the history behind it and around it is so involved that I end up learning so much reading about it that I may not have otherwise.
One negative thing about this book: it really makes me want to try literally any variety that's not a Cavendish, especially the now very scarce Gros Michel. I will never be fully satisfied until I someday find out and try it and learn what all the fuss was about.
4/5
I love books like this, because even if the subject matter is as narrow as one type of fruit (though it is the most abundant fruit in the world), the history behind it and around it is so involved that I end up learning so much reading about it that I may not have otherwise.
One negative thing about this book: it really makes me want to try literally any variety that's not a Cavendish, especially the now very scarce Gros Michel. I will never be fully satisfied until I someday find out and try it and learn what all the fuss was about.
4/5
June 17, 2024
I was inspired to learn about bananas because of a roguelike game I got absolutely hooked on (Balatro). This book is a political, science, and economic lesson from a very impractical fruit. Banana history is pretty interesting but also horrific
January 14, 2025
this book is bananas B-A-N-A-N-A-S
May 8, 2017
A review (with digressions) for people considering this as a book club choice
Avoiding responsibility, like lying, should be practiced even when not strictly necessary if one really wishes to stay at the top of one's game. Still, the inability to bi-locate leads to occasional and unavoidable assignment of responsibility in one's absence, like when the book club (while I was at work) recently assigned me to choose a book for the coming reading season. Perhaps my real error occurred days earlier, when I mentioned to the Long Suffering Wife (LSW), a fellow book club member, that the book club's list of potential reads never included the micro-history, a genre of which I am very fond.
(Sometimes, on long car trips with LSW, we compete for who can make up the absurdest micro-history title, following the pattern “X: The Y that Changed the World”, where X is the name of an object and Y is the category to which the object belongs. I remember suggesting X=Mauve, and then found out later there is really a book about this, proving that politics is not the only endeavor where satire has become obsolete.)
So, LSW came home from book club with the suspiciously pat story that my name had been drawn “randomly” to choose a book for book club in the category… micro-history. My desire to avoid responsibility warred valiantly with my much more formidable desire not to cross LSW, who can be very fierce if provoked, I tell you from hard experience. I decided that choosing a micro-history was unavoidable.
LSW reported that members of the book club had never heard of micro-histories. (What cave do readers like this live in?) She sold the book club on the novel idea of micro-histories by emphasizing the sub-genre of micro-histories called “commodity micro-histories”. Mark Kurlansky is a well-known and persistent practitioner of this genre with books on cod, oysters, salt, and most recently paper. There are also popular micro-histories from other authors of alcohol, milk, chocolate, coffee (at least two), tea, vanilla, eels, opium, diamonds, uranium, oranges, tomatoes, cotton, caviar, olives, olive oil, sugar, and pencils.
A cousin to this genre is the micro-history on man-made constructs and other non-commodities including, but not limited to, home, cleanliness, color, reading, marriage, wives (but, interestingly, not husbands), cancer, rabies, sex, zero, infinity, rats, swearing, corpses, and many more.
But my favorite genre is the history micro-history, where a single event spiders out in all directions, often with interesting unintended consequences. The most famous and best-selling of this genre is probably the history of the decades-long race to correctly determine longitude, but there are many historical events that have received a fine treatment, including the sinking of the Lusitania, the assassination of President James Garfield, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 17th-century Tulip mania, the eruption of Krakatoa, the mad bomber of 1950's Manhattan, murders too numerous to mention individually, and (my sentimental favorite) the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.
But LSW warned that, however endearingly enthusiastic I am about the topic, other book group members were unlikely to find the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 as compelling a topic, since we are sadly a long, long way from Boston, in the company of people who, in a few inexplicable cases, have not even visited Boston. Also, (she reminded me) she sold the idea to the book group mostly through examples of commodity micro-histories, see above.
Having narrowed down the options that far, I was faced with the vexing question I ask myself several times a day: “What would a normal person do?” I mean, I'd happily read 400+ pages about pencils, but I've noticed that other people might think that was a waste of time. (Many of these same people might have no compunction about spending hours on the details of the lives of the latest no-talent celebrity or selfish aristocrat, but that's off topic). So: short is good. The shortest microhistory I've found is John McPhee's 1967 book on oranges, which is really a long New Yorker article somehow padded out to 160 pages for publication. Still, it's 50 years old, and felt that the book club might want something of more recent vintage.
Life is somewhat vexed and full of anguish at this moment in our history, so I felt the book club would look more favorably on a book that might generate cheerful conversation while everybody was pounding back the Merlot. This ruled out, for example, the microhistory about uranium. I really enjoyed the audiobook version, but a lot of it, I remember, was about people suffering terribly in mines. Then, of course, once the stuff gets above ground, things get really grim, what with nuclear weapons and all. Seeing as how nuclear weapons, once thought a fading threat, are now making an unwelcome re-appearance in people's nightmares, I thought the members of the book group would welcome the opportunity to get away from all that.
Bananas are cheerful! This is noted even in the book itself (finally, getting to the actual book in question), which includes a remarkably informative chapter on the 1922 Tin Pan Alley novelty hit “Yes, We Have No Bananas” and yet another one devoted to slipping on a banana peel as classic movie sight gag. Since the book's publication in 2008, the banana has continued to provide comic fodder as the favorite food/conversation topic/go-to any-occasion utterance of the yellow pill-shaped Minions, of lucrative movie and associated licensing fame.
Still, the book group cannot be exclusively unicorns and rainbows. Some grit and adversity is required to generate conversation. Bananas – and this book – have that as well. As the precious few readers who have persisted this far (and I thank you) might well be aware, bananas (here I quote LSW) “have not had sex for a long time”, meaning, they haven't reproduced in the traditional way, yielding a world-wide monoculture of delicious and easy-to-transport fruit. Sadly, things bite back, as in this case, when it was only a matter of time before a banana blight bred itself into existence and roared through the near-identical genetic population, leaving a swath of useless and distinctly unfunny brown rotting plants in its wake.
As a result, there is controversy to discuss, since a savior for the banana may come in the form of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Normally, I refrain from discussing this topic because, well, I am a liberal in the American political sense, and like all of us now tend to socialize with the like-minded. While we are all quick to condemn American conservatives as science deniers and crackpot conspiracy theories on global warming, discussing GMOs seems to be our side's opportunity to engage in similar behavior. We can condemn all who think that genetic manipulation could actually improve our food supply and security to perdition as lackeys of the world-wide mostache-twirling Monsanto-led patented-seed-hawking agro-industrial conspiracy, evidence be damned. Since I hold people who generally agree with me to a higher level of intellectual rigor that people who don't generally agree with me (who must be idiots, right?), I tend to want to abuse to people like this. This tendency is stronger when the tongue is loosened by Merlot, as I fear it will be at the book club. But I think if I just put some Post-It(TM) Notes on my Kindle I bring to the club, saying something like “Don't be rude to ill-informed”, I'll probably be able to control myself.
To be fair, I also want to point out that anti-GMO zealots can be useful in their incorrectness, since it seems reasonable that private enterprises engaged in genetic manipulation can be expected to engage in safety-be-damned corner-cutting in pursuit of the largest return for their shareholders, so should be watched over by as many people as possible with a heartfelt adversarial relationship to the process.
Anyway, I think I can hold it together at the book club in the face of opinions I disagree with, because I am, after all, an adult, at least physically. I just shut my eyes and envision myself lying down in cool grass on a summer afternoon, or alternately maybe buying and preparing chicken from Ottomanelli's in Greenwich Village, both of which visions have historically produced a calm happy feeling in moments of stress.
So, in summary, I think this book – did I mention that, at this writing, the Kindle e-book is only $4.99, and used copies can be obtained for a mere 25 cents? – will hit the sweet spot for the book club in terms of length, entertainment value, and discussion potential, after which I can go back to my usual practice, which is, studiously refusing to meet the gaze of anyone, ever, who asks for volunteers.
Avoiding responsibility, like lying, should be practiced even when not strictly necessary if one really wishes to stay at the top of one's game. Still, the inability to bi-locate leads to occasional and unavoidable assignment of responsibility in one's absence, like when the book club (while I was at work) recently assigned me to choose a book for the coming reading season. Perhaps my real error occurred days earlier, when I mentioned to the Long Suffering Wife (LSW), a fellow book club member, that the book club's list of potential reads never included the micro-history, a genre of which I am very fond.
(Sometimes, on long car trips with LSW, we compete for who can make up the absurdest micro-history title, following the pattern “X: The Y that Changed the World”, where X is the name of an object and Y is the category to which the object belongs. I remember suggesting X=Mauve, and then found out later there is really a book about this, proving that politics is not the only endeavor where satire has become obsolete.)
So, LSW came home from book club with the suspiciously pat story that my name had been drawn “randomly” to choose a book for book club in the category… micro-history. My desire to avoid responsibility warred valiantly with my much more formidable desire not to cross LSW, who can be very fierce if provoked, I tell you from hard experience. I decided that choosing a micro-history was unavoidable.
LSW reported that members of the book club had never heard of micro-histories. (What cave do readers like this live in?) She sold the book club on the novel idea of micro-histories by emphasizing the sub-genre of micro-histories called “commodity micro-histories”. Mark Kurlansky is a well-known and persistent practitioner of this genre with books on cod, oysters, salt, and most recently paper. There are also popular micro-histories from other authors of alcohol, milk, chocolate, coffee (at least two), tea, vanilla, eels, opium, diamonds, uranium, oranges, tomatoes, cotton, caviar, olives, olive oil, sugar, and pencils.
A cousin to this genre is the micro-history on man-made constructs and other non-commodities including, but not limited to, home, cleanliness, color, reading, marriage, wives (but, interestingly, not husbands), cancer, rabies, sex, zero, infinity, rats, swearing, corpses, and many more.
But my favorite genre is the history micro-history, where a single event spiders out in all directions, often with interesting unintended consequences. The most famous and best-selling of this genre is probably the history of the decades-long race to correctly determine longitude, but there are many historical events that have received a fine treatment, including the sinking of the Lusitania, the assassination of President James Garfield, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 17th-century Tulip mania, the eruption of Krakatoa, the mad bomber of 1950's Manhattan, murders too numerous to mention individually, and (my sentimental favorite) the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.
But LSW warned that, however endearingly enthusiastic I am about the topic, other book group members were unlikely to find the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 as compelling a topic, since we are sadly a long, long way from Boston, in the company of people who, in a few inexplicable cases, have not even visited Boston. Also, (she reminded me) she sold the idea to the book group mostly through examples of commodity micro-histories, see above.
Having narrowed down the options that far, I was faced with the vexing question I ask myself several times a day: “What would a normal person do?” I mean, I'd happily read 400+ pages about pencils, but I've noticed that other people might think that was a waste of time. (Many of these same people might have no compunction about spending hours on the details of the lives of the latest no-talent celebrity or selfish aristocrat, but that's off topic). So: short is good. The shortest microhistory I've found is John McPhee's 1967 book on oranges, which is really a long New Yorker article somehow padded out to 160 pages for publication. Still, it's 50 years old, and felt that the book club might want something of more recent vintage.
Life is somewhat vexed and full of anguish at this moment in our history, so I felt the book club would look more favorably on a book that might generate cheerful conversation while everybody was pounding back the Merlot. This ruled out, for example, the microhistory about uranium. I really enjoyed the audiobook version, but a lot of it, I remember, was about people suffering terribly in mines. Then, of course, once the stuff gets above ground, things get really grim, what with nuclear weapons and all. Seeing as how nuclear weapons, once thought a fading threat, are now making an unwelcome re-appearance in people's nightmares, I thought the members of the book group would welcome the opportunity to get away from all that.
Bananas are cheerful! This is noted even in the book itself (finally, getting to the actual book in question), which includes a remarkably informative chapter on the 1922 Tin Pan Alley novelty hit “Yes, We Have No Bananas” and yet another one devoted to slipping on a banana peel as classic movie sight gag. Since the book's publication in 2008, the banana has continued to provide comic fodder as the favorite food/conversation topic/go-to any-occasion utterance of the yellow pill-shaped Minions, of lucrative movie and associated licensing fame.
Still, the book group cannot be exclusively unicorns and rainbows. Some grit and adversity is required to generate conversation. Bananas – and this book – have that as well. As the precious few readers who have persisted this far (and I thank you) might well be aware, bananas (here I quote LSW) “have not had sex for a long time”, meaning, they haven't reproduced in the traditional way, yielding a world-wide monoculture of delicious and easy-to-transport fruit. Sadly, things bite back, as in this case, when it was only a matter of time before a banana blight bred itself into existence and roared through the near-identical genetic population, leaving a swath of useless and distinctly unfunny brown rotting plants in its wake.
As a result, there is controversy to discuss, since a savior for the banana may come in the form of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Normally, I refrain from discussing this topic because, well, I am a liberal in the American political sense, and like all of us now tend to socialize with the like-minded. While we are all quick to condemn American conservatives as science deniers and crackpot conspiracy theories on global warming, discussing GMOs seems to be our side's opportunity to engage in similar behavior. We can condemn all who think that genetic manipulation could actually improve our food supply and security to perdition as lackeys of the world-wide mostache-twirling Monsanto-led patented-seed-hawking agro-industrial conspiracy, evidence be damned. Since I hold people who generally agree with me to a higher level of intellectual rigor that people who don't generally agree with me (who must be idiots, right?), I tend to want to abuse to people like this. This tendency is stronger when the tongue is loosened by Merlot, as I fear it will be at the book club. But I think if I just put some Post-It(TM) Notes on my Kindle I bring to the club, saying something like “Don't be rude to ill-informed”, I'll probably be able to control myself.
To be fair, I also want to point out that anti-GMO zealots can be useful in their incorrectness, since it seems reasonable that private enterprises engaged in genetic manipulation can be expected to engage in safety-be-damned corner-cutting in pursuit of the largest return for their shareholders, so should be watched over by as many people as possible with a heartfelt adversarial relationship to the process.
Anyway, I think I can hold it together at the book club in the face of opinions I disagree with, because I am, after all, an adult, at least physically. I just shut my eyes and envision myself lying down in cool grass on a summer afternoon, or alternately maybe buying and preparing chicken from Ottomanelli's in Greenwich Village, both of which visions have historically produced a calm happy feeling in moments of stress.
So, in summary, I think this book – did I mention that, at this writing, the Kindle e-book is only $4.99, and used copies can be obtained for a mere 25 cents? – will hit the sweet spot for the book club in terms of length, entertainment value, and discussion potential, after which I can go back to my usual practice, which is, studiously refusing to meet the gaze of anyone, ever, who asks for volunteers.
March 3, 2009
This is one of the most fascinating books I've read recently.
This book covers the history -- and future! -- of the humble banana. It starts with its beginnings in Asia, its geographic and evolutionary progressing, and the arrival of the banana to America.
Bananas are incredible: the popular ones have no seed, and reproduce asexually. Since they're all genetically identical, they are very susceptible to disease. In fact, today's banana (the Cavendish) wasn't the first popular banana in the US. That was the Gros Michel, the Big Mike, which arrived around the 1870's. By the turn of the century, Panama disease was wiping out huge areas of banana farms. The companies decided that the best way to fight the disease (actually a fungus) was to stay ahead of it, by consuming huge amounts of new land -- and to do that, they used their money and political influence to get the US military to help them (thus explaining the term "Banana Republic"). The song "Yes, We Have No Bananas" is said to be a reference to the banana shortages caused by the disease.
Eventually -- around the 1950's -- banana producers switched over to the Cavendish. The taste was good enough (most say it wasn't quite as good, although a few disagree), it was shippable (but not quite as sturdy as the Big Mike), and most importantly, it was resistant to Panama disease. Something similar could happen today, and so the author talks about attempts to develop new types of bananas that could replace the Cavendish.
The book doesn't just talk about the banana in the US, it talks about its influence across the globe. In some parts of the world, people get 70% of the calories from the banana.
In short, this book exceeded my expectations spectacularly. I don't think it will have much re-read value, but it entertained me wonderfully this time.
This book covers the history -- and future! -- of the humble banana. It starts with its beginnings in Asia, its geographic and evolutionary progressing, and the arrival of the banana to America.
Bananas are incredible: the popular ones have no seed, and reproduce asexually. Since they're all genetically identical, they are very susceptible to disease. In fact, today's banana (the Cavendish) wasn't the first popular banana in the US. That was the Gros Michel, the Big Mike, which arrived around the 1870's. By the turn of the century, Panama disease was wiping out huge areas of banana farms. The companies decided that the best way to fight the disease (actually a fungus) was to stay ahead of it, by consuming huge amounts of new land -- and to do that, they used their money and political influence to get the US military to help them (thus explaining the term "Banana Republic"). The song "Yes, We Have No Bananas" is said to be a reference to the banana shortages caused by the disease.
Eventually -- around the 1950's -- banana producers switched over to the Cavendish. The taste was good enough (most say it wasn't quite as good, although a few disagree), it was shippable (but not quite as sturdy as the Big Mike), and most importantly, it was resistant to Panama disease. Something similar could happen today, and so the author talks about attempts to develop new types of bananas that could replace the Cavendish.
The book doesn't just talk about the banana in the US, it talks about its influence across the globe. In some parts of the world, people get 70% of the calories from the banana.
In short, this book exceeded my expectations spectacularly. I don't think it will have much re-read value, but it entertained me wonderfully this time.
August 18, 2019
[Random Read. 23, History.]
A fascinating look at the history of the banana, from its spread as a wild fruit across the globe to its cultivation and sale. If you've never thought about bananas before, this book will be a real eye-opener. Did you know that all bananas cultivated and sold by companies are sterile clones of each other? This is why they're so easily devastated by crop fungus such as Panama disease and Black Sigatoka, and also why it's so difficult to breed resistant bananas (they don't reproduce!). Did you know there are many varieties of banana, such as the Gros Michel, across the globe? Gros Michels taste pretty good, but they aren't planted and sold on a massive scale any more because they're so susceptible to disease. (Fun fact: the song "Yes, We Have No Bananas" is based on the fact that banana shortages were a common thing due to intermittent fungal destruction of banana crops.) The history of American banana cultivation is a cruel one: exploitation of workers, government intervention, assassination, clear-cutting, and land-grabbing. And since a century of doing things this way hasn't taught banana companies any lessons, they continue to work this way: plant crops until Panama disease or another rot infects that soil, and then move to yet another razed section of land. Writing in 2008, Koeppel believes that the banana most familiar to us, the Cavendish, is doomed in the near future, just as the Gros Michel was dropped when disease nearly wiped it out. He might be right. But whether or not banana companies can continue with their exploitation model, their history is enthralling. The men who founded what would become Dole and Chiquita literally changed the world, innovating refrigerated cargo ships and making an exotic tropical fruit as common and beloved as the American apple. Yet as inventive and prescient as they were, their colonial mindset blinded them to the dangers of short-term dominance.
A fascinating look at the history of the banana, from its spread as a wild fruit across the globe to its cultivation and sale. If you've never thought about bananas before, this book will be a real eye-opener. Did you know that all bananas cultivated and sold by companies are sterile clones of each other? This is why they're so easily devastated by crop fungus such as Panama disease and Black Sigatoka, and also why it's so difficult to breed resistant bananas (they don't reproduce!). Did you know there are many varieties of banana, such as the Gros Michel, across the globe? Gros Michels taste pretty good, but they aren't planted and sold on a massive scale any more because they're so susceptible to disease. (Fun fact: the song "Yes, We Have No Bananas" is based on the fact that banana shortages were a common thing due to intermittent fungal destruction of banana crops.) The history of American banana cultivation is a cruel one: exploitation of workers, government intervention, assassination, clear-cutting, and land-grabbing. And since a century of doing things this way hasn't taught banana companies any lessons, they continue to work this way: plant crops until Panama disease or another rot infects that soil, and then move to yet another razed section of land. Writing in 2008, Koeppel believes that the banana most familiar to us, the Cavendish, is doomed in the near future, just as the Gros Michel was dropped when disease nearly wiped it out. He might be right. But whether or not banana companies can continue with their exploitation model, their history is enthralling. The men who founded what would become Dole and Chiquita literally changed the world, innovating refrigerated cargo ships and making an exotic tropical fruit as common and beloved as the American apple. Yet as inventive and prescient as they were, their colonial mindset blinded them to the dangers of short-term dominance.
February 21, 2025
Nonfiction>History, Colonialism, South America
I listened to this and though it is short it is packed full of information and lessons about how we got to the bananas we have today in America (the US). I enjoyed the author including other regions' banana stories so we can understand the absurdity of our consumption habits. There are tangential lessons to be learned and relationships with other foods in our supply chain that we may think about little differently. As I go to the grocery store in February in Ohio, I see all kinds of produce that shouldn't really be available to me. The oddest part to me is that when it is June and July, a lot of the products still come from far, far away because of how the logistics of our food supply works.
Outside of the efforts we spend to move foodstuffs to us, there is also the specific toll that the banana-growing regions of South America and Africa pay for us to have the portable snack and cereal add-in. Our money flooding the area changes the politics and lives of the people where the bananas are grown. From outright US intervention into their leaders to the inevitable pressure that competition for our dollars creates, these regions and communities have suffered.
Even if you aren't moved by the environmental cost (moving the bananas so far out from where they're grown) or the human cost (just discussed), the lack of diversity in the modern US-consumed banana makes it vulnerable to any threat. There is no diversity in the genes--all the plants are clones of each other--so if a disease takes hold, the entire supply of bananas is at stake.
Pick up this book to read or give it a listen! Very interesting information for most Americans and I highly recommend it. 4 stars for wide appeal. I'm not going as far as 5 because it is not quite riveting enough for me to recommend to readers who normally avoid nonfiction.
I listened to this and though it is short it is packed full of information and lessons about how we got to the bananas we have today in America (the US). I enjoyed the author including other regions' banana stories so we can understand the absurdity of our consumption habits. There are tangential lessons to be learned and relationships with other foods in our supply chain that we may think about little differently. As I go to the grocery store in February in Ohio, I see all kinds of produce that shouldn't really be available to me. The oddest part to me is that when it is June and July, a lot of the products still come from far, far away because of how the logistics of our food supply works.
Outside of the efforts we spend to move foodstuffs to us, there is also the specific toll that the banana-growing regions of South America and Africa pay for us to have the portable snack and cereal add-in. Our money flooding the area changes the politics and lives of the people where the bananas are grown. From outright US intervention into their leaders to the inevitable pressure that competition for our dollars creates, these regions and communities have suffered.
Even if you aren't moved by the environmental cost (moving the bananas so far out from where they're grown) or the human cost (just discussed), the lack of diversity in the modern US-consumed banana makes it vulnerable to any threat. There is no diversity in the genes--all the plants are clones of each other--so if a disease takes hold, the entire supply of bananas is at stake.
Pick up this book to read or give it a listen! Very interesting information for most Americans and I highly recommend it. 4 stars for wide appeal. I'm not going as far as 5 because it is not quite riveting enough for me to recommend to readers who normally avoid nonfiction.
August 28, 2025
yeah this was sick. it’s been a few days since i finished it and i can’t remember much of what was said. but i know i enjoyed it. memories include: crimes against farmworkers (shocker), bananas are included in basically every interaction the us has had w central american countries, bananas were important post rwandan genocide, the banana variety we handpicked to be resistant to the worst banana disease isn’t actually resistant!! and the banana as we know it will prob disappear in our lifetime!!! but don’t worry they’ll find another one and it probably also won’t be disease resistant
January 18, 2025
3.5/4 ⭐️’s I rounded up for good reads! I thought it was interesting to learn all the facts about bananas. I liked the short chapters because I wasn’t sure with it being non-fiction that I would stay interested!
May 7, 2025
The history of the banana is my roman empire. 4.25/5
April 6, 2025
Curiosity killed the cat on this one. I now know more about bananas than I ever needed to
October 31, 2012
Bananas have been coming up in my life a lot lately - I've decided they're the wonder food for biking. A guy at work has been sharing lots of banana factoids. So I'm predisposed to like reading about bananas.
And the first hundred pages or so were really interesting. I had no idea that before 1870, Americans didn't eat bananas at all. Then bananas exploded on the scene faster than Gangnam-style. United Fruits (Chiquita) and Standard Fruits (Dole) were ruthless robber barons that made the era of robber barons proud. "Banana Republic" is no misnomer - Central American and Caribbean governments existed at the pleasure of the banana companies. Then, the biggest breed of banana got a disease! That's hugely bad for banana stalks, which are reproduced from cuttings, and are all genetically identical for a particular breed! So the bananas people ate in the 1920's - Gros Michels - are basically extinct! Now our breed (Cavendish!) is facing a similar disease!
Then the next hundred pages were kind of interesting. Before 1870, Americans didn't eat bananas at all. Then bananas exploded on the scene. United Fruits (Chiquita) and Standard Fruits (Dole) were ruthless robber barons that made their eras proud. "Banana Republics" - Central American and Caribbean governments - existed at the pleasure of the banana companies. Then, the biggest breed of banana got a disease. That's hugely bad for banana stalks. So the bananas people ate in the 1920's - Gros Michels - are basically extinct. Now our breed (Cavendish) is facing a similar disease.
Then the last 60 pages were not interesting. Before 1870, Americans didn't eat bananas at all. Then bananas exploded. United Fruits and Standard Fruits were ruthless. "Banana Republics" existed at the pleasure of the banana companies. Then, the biggest breed got a disease. They're gone. Our breed (Cavendish) is facing a similar disease. The last 16 pages were a timeline that went over it all again.
The photos were boring, too, and I suspect were there to pad out the pages.
100 pages crammed into 260, basically. Still, interesting enough.
And the first hundred pages or so were really interesting. I had no idea that before 1870, Americans didn't eat bananas at all. Then bananas exploded on the scene faster than Gangnam-style. United Fruits (Chiquita) and Standard Fruits (Dole) were ruthless robber barons that made the era of robber barons proud. "Banana Republic" is no misnomer - Central American and Caribbean governments existed at the pleasure of the banana companies. Then, the biggest breed of banana got a disease! That's hugely bad for banana stalks, which are reproduced from cuttings, and are all genetically identical for a particular breed! So the bananas people ate in the 1920's - Gros Michels - are basically extinct! Now our breed (Cavendish!) is facing a similar disease!
Then the next hundred pages were kind of interesting. Before 1870, Americans didn't eat bananas at all. Then bananas exploded on the scene. United Fruits (Chiquita) and Standard Fruits (Dole) were ruthless robber barons that made their eras proud. "Banana Republics" - Central American and Caribbean governments - existed at the pleasure of the banana companies. Then, the biggest breed of banana got a disease. That's hugely bad for banana stalks. So the bananas people ate in the 1920's - Gros Michels - are basically extinct. Now our breed (Cavendish) is facing a similar disease.
Then the last 60 pages were not interesting. Before 1870, Americans didn't eat bananas at all. Then bananas exploded. United Fruits and Standard Fruits were ruthless. "Banana Republics" existed at the pleasure of the banana companies. Then, the biggest breed got a disease. They're gone. Our breed (Cavendish) is facing a similar disease. The last 16 pages were a timeline that went over it all again.
The photos were boring, too, and I suspect were there to pad out the pages.
100 pages crammed into 260, basically. Still, interesting enough.
January 8, 2012
23rd - 2012
Jadi, Saudara-saudara sekalian, pohon pengetahuan yang terlarang di surga itu bukan pohon apel. Tapi pisang. Ulangi kata-kata saya, PI-SANG! Hanya karena kesalahan penerjemahan bibel saja membuat orang awam jadi mengira buah yang menggoda Hawa itu adalah buah apel.
Kalau saja tidak ada kesalahan intrepretasi itu, pasti lagu Anita Sarawak yang populer itu akan berjudul Tragedi Buah Pisang.
Dan buku ini, Saudara-Saudara yang budiman, memang bukan hanya bercerita tentang sejarah pohon dan buah pisang, tapi juga tragedi yang ditimbulkannya dalam sejarah. Bukan hanya tragedi awal mula manusia sehingga terpaksa menjadi khalifah di muka bumi, tapi juga tragedi yang ditimbulkan para importir pisang yang ingin memonopoli pasokan pisang, sehingga dapat mengacau-balaukan demokrasi di negara penghasil pisang (biasa disebut Banana Republic).
Jadi di sini, Saudara-Saudara, dapat kita simpulkan bahwa pisang selaku komoditi agribisnis yang populer bisa menimbulkan petaka yang sama dengan minyak...
Jadi, Saudara-saudara sekalian, pohon pengetahuan yang terlarang di surga itu bukan pohon apel. Tapi pisang. Ulangi kata-kata saya, PI-SANG! Hanya karena kesalahan penerjemahan bibel saja membuat orang awam jadi mengira buah yang menggoda Hawa itu adalah buah apel.
Kalau saja tidak ada kesalahan intrepretasi itu, pasti lagu Anita Sarawak yang populer itu akan berjudul Tragedi Buah Pisang.
Dan buku ini, Saudara-Saudara yang budiman, memang bukan hanya bercerita tentang sejarah pohon dan buah pisang, tapi juga tragedi yang ditimbulkannya dalam sejarah. Bukan hanya tragedi awal mula manusia sehingga terpaksa menjadi khalifah di muka bumi, tapi juga tragedi yang ditimbulkan para importir pisang yang ingin memonopoli pasokan pisang, sehingga dapat mengacau-balaukan demokrasi di negara penghasil pisang (biasa disebut Banana Republic).
Jadi di sini, Saudara-Saudara, dapat kita simpulkan bahwa pisang selaku komoditi agribisnis yang populer bisa menimbulkan petaka yang sama dengan minyak...
March 2, 2010
This is a really disappointing book. It got lots of glowing reviews, but I was consistently frustrated by it. It is poorly written, sloppily researched, randomly organized, simplistically argued. The book's most egregious fault is that it hints at interesting and important ideas on the biological, political, economic, and social impact of the rise of the banana industry, but the author never bothers to develop these. There are lots of interesting tidbits and suggestive ideas, but they never amount to anything of substance. I think bananas are a really intriguing and important product that could tell us a bunch (intended) about the interlinked character of twentieth century American imperialism and capitalism, but this lazy book doesn't ever rise to the challenge.
January 18, 2016
I read this because it was offered to me for three bucks, and I decided I was three bucks worth of interested in bananas. How interested in bananas are you? That is the central question. I feel like a review of this book is sort of unnecessary. It is about the cultivation and worldwide spread of bananas, the troubled history of big banana companies and the nasty things they did in Latin America, and the threats plaguing banana crops today.
Wanna know about bananas? Here you go.
Wanna know about bananas? Here you go.
Want to read
March 12, 2015I really want to read this but $13.99 for an ebook about fruit? No.
That being said, the sample was fascinating. Bananas are cloned so that they can be grown seedless. And banana crops are in danger of dying out because they are cloned. What does this all mean for the future of human cloning? Oh the drama. I want more!
That being said, the sample was fascinating. Bananas are cloned so that they can be grown seedless. And banana crops are in danger of dying out because they are cloned. What does this all mean for the future of human cloning? Oh the drama. I want more!
March 4, 2021
Very interesting history of the banana and banana trade, looking at social, economic, political and biological aspects.
August 29, 2022
Its bananas!
So much I did not know about bananas and the rise of big fruit corporations. Really makes you question why a clothing store is called "Banana Republic."
So much I did not know about bananas and the rise of big fruit corporations. Really makes you question why a clothing store is called "Banana Republic."
February 28, 2024
5 Word Review:
Could be Kurlansky, but better?
Could be Kurlansky, but better?
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