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The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World
The Potato tells the story of how a humble vegetable, once regarded as trash food, had as revolutionary an impact on Western history as the railroad or the automobile. Using Ireland, England, France, and the United States as examples, Larry Zuckerman shows how daily life from the 1770s until World War I would have been unrecognizable-perhaps impossible-without the potato, which functioned as fast food, famine insurance, fuel and labor saver, budget stretcher, and bank loan, as well as delicacy. Drawing on personal diaries, contemporaneous newspaper accounts, and other primary sources, this is popular social history at its liveliest and most illuminating.
336 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1998
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December 4, 2025
This is really a solid book - sort of a gateway book - it purports to be about the potato, but it's really about land tenancy laws, enclosure, the advent of crop rotation, population growth,famine, fuel costs, social history of home baking & the like. The chapter "Women's Work" could be an article to stand on its own. He even gets into discussion of the use of utensils, dishes & pots - and given the late adaptation of forks in the US, and the ongoing use of knives for eating in England - it's no wonder that my granddad, who was born in 1910 to English emigrants to who moved SW Pennsylvania to mine coal, perpetually vexed my grandmother with his ingrained habit of eating off his butter knife. He would always laugh and repeat the rhyme of "I eat my peas with honey..." before switching to a fork to please her.
Fascinating issues raised - highly recommended.
ORIGINAL URL: http://www.livegreenwearblack.com/201...
© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.
Fascinating issues raised - highly recommended.
ORIGINAL URL: http://www.livegreenwearblack.com/201...
© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.
August 29, 2011
There is nothing wrong with this book, but I was hoping for something different. In general, I enjoy books which use food to teach us history, especially what life was like for ordinary people. I usually, however, like to learn a little more about the subject before using it as a way to view history. Zuckerman writes about how Europeans viewed potatoes, but not much about potatoes themselves. I wish he had included a little more about their history in Peru before they made it over to Europe. I wish I knew how the Irish apple and lumper varieties tasted compared to today's Burbank, and what exactly a long-day variety is. He writes a great deal about how the potato's nutrition affected Europe, but I would like to know some more about what exactly are the nutrients available in a potato. He also talks about how anti-fast food movements were motivated purely by snobbery; he completely ignores any health discussion of deep fat frying.
The book is very good at explaining what everyday life was like in the US, Britain, Ireland, and France. The "Woman's Work" chapter was especially good. I found it interesting that, for much of the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, middle class and laboring Americans ate better and more varied food than their European counterparts. Oddly, this seems to have been rough on the women, as they were expected to cook more dishes in larger quantities for a less appreciative audience.
Something I found frustrating was Zuckerman's emphasis on the poverty of rural France after describing life in Ireland. In many parts of Ireland, all people could afford was one pot to cook their potatoes in, and all they ate was potatoes. Not only could they not afford other foods, they could not even afford to fuel to cook foods other than potatoes. Some didn't even have a pot and cooked the potatoes in the ashes. The French, on the other hand, had varied diets and cooking utensils. I got the impression that people had about five different pots. He tried to convey how limited their cuisine was by saying that a working man probably had a pound of meat a week. This is four four-ounce servings, which most nutritionists think is just fine now. Using this as a reason after describing a culture where most people only ate potatoes bothered me.
I found his discussion of people's attitudes towards poverty interesting. He talked about how the Victorians hesitated to help during the Great Famine because the blamed the Irish for their situation. While they may not have talked about family planning and contraception explicitly, it was implicit in the censure that poor Irish married who could not afford it, and then proceeded to have too many children. People wrote about how terrible the beggars were and blamed the Irish for being lazy, when the law allowed landlords to raise workers' rents if they improved the property they rented. While the French did not suffer to the same extent from curl, I would be interested to see if anyone blamed French peasants who suffered from hunger after potato crop failure. It sounds like they, unlike the rural Irish, were respected.
I still hear much of the same rhetoric nowadays about poverty in the States that the Victorians said about Ireland.
The book is very good at explaining what everyday life was like in the US, Britain, Ireland, and France. The "Woman's Work" chapter was especially good. I found it interesting that, for much of the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, middle class and laboring Americans ate better and more varied food than their European counterparts. Oddly, this seems to have been rough on the women, as they were expected to cook more dishes in larger quantities for a less appreciative audience.
Something I found frustrating was Zuckerman's emphasis on the poverty of rural France after describing life in Ireland. In many parts of Ireland, all people could afford was one pot to cook their potatoes in, and all they ate was potatoes. Not only could they not afford other foods, they could not even afford to fuel to cook foods other than potatoes. Some didn't even have a pot and cooked the potatoes in the ashes. The French, on the other hand, had varied diets and cooking utensils. I got the impression that people had about five different pots. He tried to convey how limited their cuisine was by saying that a working man probably had a pound of meat a week. This is four four-ounce servings, which most nutritionists think is just fine now. Using this as a reason after describing a culture where most people only ate potatoes bothered me.
I found his discussion of people's attitudes towards poverty interesting. He talked about how the Victorians hesitated to help during the Great Famine because the blamed the Irish for their situation. While they may not have talked about family planning and contraception explicitly, it was implicit in the censure that poor Irish married who could not afford it, and then proceeded to have too many children. People wrote about how terrible the beggars were and blamed the Irish for being lazy, when the law allowed landlords to raise workers' rents if they improved the property they rented. While the French did not suffer to the same extent from curl, I would be interested to see if anyone blamed French peasants who suffered from hunger after potato crop failure. It sounds like they, unlike the rural Irish, were respected.
I still hear much of the same rhetoric nowadays about poverty in the States that the Victorians said about Ireland.
March 2, 2017
The print is very small in this factual book, which covers the daily diets of the majority of people in Europe for a few centuries. We can be glad all over again that we did not live in the old days.
Importing the potato from the Andes took some time to catch on, and only the fact of it thriving in Europe's conditions made it popular. Europe ate grain, meaning wheat bread if people could get it. When they couldn't, because of price or growing conditions, they ate rye bread or oats. The bread couldn't be baked every day in a cottage, because they hadn't ovens, and they hadn't fuel. Baking was done once every two or three weeks, often communally, and the bread was always eaten with a soup or something in which to sop it as it would have gone rock hard. There's no mention of the medieval trencher, a half-loaf placed on the table in front of a diner and onto which a stew was ladled. When potatoes came along, and emerged from gardens, they were shunned by the wealthy because wealthy people ate meats and fruits, not muddy roots. But the good crop, ease of growing and harvesting and the ease of baking or boiling made potatoes popular with cottage dwellers. Potatoes could also be fed to pigs, as could the peels.
We get good contrasts between Irish and English circumstances, including factory workers' conditions, followed by an enlightening look at the French. I can only really comment on the Irish and would add a few points - the author probably had to discard much salient information to keep the book at a reasonable length.
We're told that the Irish landscape had been denuded of trees for cask making. Actually, Cromwell ordered all the native forests felled so that rebellious Irish could not gain shelter and supplies from them. The oak was used to make Elizabeth's navy. Casks would have been made too, in order to ship the immense amount of foodstuffs out of Ireland annually. Oats are mentioned as being grown but not eaten so often as in Scotland. The Irish farmers had their horses requisitioned during the Napoleonic wars and were given donkeys instead, imported from Spain. Hence the oats were shipped out of Ireland for feeding horses in England while donkeys ate rough grazing. In Scotland the latitude is too high for wheat so oats had to support the people. Potatoes introduced a new factor to the demographics as we are shown; a larger family size could be supported on increasingly smaller plots of land.
During the awful famine times after the fungal blight hit the potato, I felt the author should have provided bills of lading, or an annual tally, of the immense amount of beef, grain, dairy and other foods being shipped out of Ireland by English landlords while her people starved. He does note that the famine did not strike equally, but in some areas where the ground was good, nobody was dependent on the potato, and it would be fair to say that there was no famine there. Some landlords made work, like building roads or barns, so the people could earn. But the author fails to show the turning point at which evictions were commonplace - barricaded doors being broken, families removed and roofs burnt - because the landlords felt there would be more profit and less work in sheep rather than late rents. Wool made clothes, particularly uniforms, which England always needed.
By contrast Americans seem to have never gone hungry, but embraced the potato as one more addition to the table. I would have added a reference from Dana's account Two Years Before The Mast, in which a ship that has been weeks at sea meets another and trades for sacks of potatoes and onions; these restore men struck with scurvy and every man enjoys them raw or cooked. We see how potatoes made it to the standard table in a household looking for convenience, and how the chip as we call it - French fry to the American author - and the crisp - chip to the author - came into popularity. Both depended on enough oil, heat and deep pans for frying.
I'd have liked a photo of the forty kinds of potatoes of all colours, shapes and sizes grown in the Andes today, some of which may be better adapted to climate change.
I would have thought a way to conclude would be with the development of the modern supermarket potato, which needs no peeling because it doesn't have a tough leathery dirty-looking skin, which comes cleaned, graded, bagged and mercifully free of the muck and stones that used to plague my mother when she bought from the supermarket up the road. Thanks very much to Larry Zuckerman for wading through all the research so we don't have to, and putting together a fine comparative study of how our ancestors lived, died, and ate potatoes.
Importing the potato from the Andes took some time to catch on, and only the fact of it thriving in Europe's conditions made it popular. Europe ate grain, meaning wheat bread if people could get it. When they couldn't, because of price or growing conditions, they ate rye bread or oats. The bread couldn't be baked every day in a cottage, because they hadn't ovens, and they hadn't fuel. Baking was done once every two or three weeks, often communally, and the bread was always eaten with a soup or something in which to sop it as it would have gone rock hard. There's no mention of the medieval trencher, a half-loaf placed on the table in front of a diner and onto which a stew was ladled. When potatoes came along, and emerged from gardens, they were shunned by the wealthy because wealthy people ate meats and fruits, not muddy roots. But the good crop, ease of growing and harvesting and the ease of baking or boiling made potatoes popular with cottage dwellers. Potatoes could also be fed to pigs, as could the peels.
We get good contrasts between Irish and English circumstances, including factory workers' conditions, followed by an enlightening look at the French. I can only really comment on the Irish and would add a few points - the author probably had to discard much salient information to keep the book at a reasonable length.
We're told that the Irish landscape had been denuded of trees for cask making. Actually, Cromwell ordered all the native forests felled so that rebellious Irish could not gain shelter and supplies from them. The oak was used to make Elizabeth's navy. Casks would have been made too, in order to ship the immense amount of foodstuffs out of Ireland annually. Oats are mentioned as being grown but not eaten so often as in Scotland. The Irish farmers had their horses requisitioned during the Napoleonic wars and were given donkeys instead, imported from Spain. Hence the oats were shipped out of Ireland for feeding horses in England while donkeys ate rough grazing. In Scotland the latitude is too high for wheat so oats had to support the people. Potatoes introduced a new factor to the demographics as we are shown; a larger family size could be supported on increasingly smaller plots of land.
During the awful famine times after the fungal blight hit the potato, I felt the author should have provided bills of lading, or an annual tally, of the immense amount of beef, grain, dairy and other foods being shipped out of Ireland by English landlords while her people starved. He does note that the famine did not strike equally, but in some areas where the ground was good, nobody was dependent on the potato, and it would be fair to say that there was no famine there. Some landlords made work, like building roads or barns, so the people could earn. But the author fails to show the turning point at which evictions were commonplace - barricaded doors being broken, families removed and roofs burnt - because the landlords felt there would be more profit and less work in sheep rather than late rents. Wool made clothes, particularly uniforms, which England always needed.
By contrast Americans seem to have never gone hungry, but embraced the potato as one more addition to the table. I would have added a reference from Dana's account Two Years Before The Mast, in which a ship that has been weeks at sea meets another and trades for sacks of potatoes and onions; these restore men struck with scurvy and every man enjoys them raw or cooked. We see how potatoes made it to the standard table in a household looking for convenience, and how the chip as we call it - French fry to the American author - and the crisp - chip to the author - came into popularity. Both depended on enough oil, heat and deep pans for frying.
I'd have liked a photo of the forty kinds of potatoes of all colours, shapes and sizes grown in the Andes today, some of which may be better adapted to climate change.
I would have thought a way to conclude would be with the development of the modern supermarket potato, which needs no peeling because it doesn't have a tough leathery dirty-looking skin, which comes cleaned, graded, bagged and mercifully free of the muck and stones that used to plague my mother when she bought from the supermarket up the road. Thanks very much to Larry Zuckerman for wading through all the research so we don't have to, and putting together a fine comparative study of how our ancestors lived, died, and ate potatoes.
November 18, 2025
Hmm, books like these are usually totally my thing.. but it was hard to get into The Potato. Unfortunately, the writing is not very engaging to me. It's dry at best. I missed biological history of the potato, or at least a short summary..
In certain parts, the book drags on and on, which made me put it down, or made me fall asleep. Bummer!
In certain parts, the book drags on and on, which made me put it down, or made me fall asleep. Bummer!
September 11, 2016
Zuckerman speaks of potatoes from time of Aztecs in Andes to contemporary western culture makes good arguments about what caused mid 19th-century blight, easy to follow; society and charity, adequately easy to follow. Zuckerman speaks of interesting questions arising as people tried to make sense of potatoe blight: Considering marriage and birth rates, death rates, primary dependency on potato, micro farms, absent large land owners, poverty decreasing amount of milk or other protien to complete potato diet. Many other aspects. Good read for good basic understanding of significance of potatoe to the West.
April 15, 2011
I do so love these food biographies. This is actually one of the better ones that I've read.
Potatoes are a humble food, of course, which is exactly why they've had such an impact where they've been grown and eaten. Potatoes are relatively easy to grow, with relatively high yields, and relatively easy to store and cook once harvested. That perfectly sets them up to be poor peoples' food, and that's the exact focus of this history.
Zuckerman does a good job of tracing attitudes towards potatoes, from the people who grew, ate, and loved them, to the people who disdained them because they were the food of the poor. The focus is somewhat narrow, focusing on the U.S., U.K., and France. As the author explains, that's simply because there's not much variety in how potatoes were thought of in different countries. These three countries form the archetypes of how virtually every country viewed the potato, and to get into all of them would simply be repetitive. If you're looking for a truly global view, this may bother you, but I do agree with the author on this point.
It's interesting that, unlike so many other food histories, there aren't any pictures. It's not discussed in the book, but I imagine it's because there's little enough to choose from. Potato packaging has also remained pretty uninspired, especially compared with some of the creative and beautiful fruit crate labels that were around several decades ago. There are no pictures shared, because there aren't any to share. I sort of wish this had been touched upon in the book, though.
In the end, the history of the potato is one set of reduced circumstances (to say the least) to another. It can get grinding, even before you get to the Great Famine, and once you do... Well, it's not a pleasant read for obvious reasons.
Potatoes are a humble food, of course, which is exactly why they've had such an impact where they've been grown and eaten. Potatoes are relatively easy to grow, with relatively high yields, and relatively easy to store and cook once harvested. That perfectly sets them up to be poor peoples' food, and that's the exact focus of this history.
Zuckerman does a good job of tracing attitudes towards potatoes, from the people who grew, ate, and loved them, to the people who disdained them because they were the food of the poor. The focus is somewhat narrow, focusing on the U.S., U.K., and France. As the author explains, that's simply because there's not much variety in how potatoes were thought of in different countries. These three countries form the archetypes of how virtually every country viewed the potato, and to get into all of them would simply be repetitive. If you're looking for a truly global view, this may bother you, but I do agree with the author on this point.
It's interesting that, unlike so many other food histories, there aren't any pictures. It's not discussed in the book, but I imagine it's because there's little enough to choose from. Potato packaging has also remained pretty uninspired, especially compared with some of the creative and beautiful fruit crate labels that were around several decades ago. There are no pictures shared, because there aren't any to share. I sort of wish this had been touched upon in the book, though.
In the end, the history of the potato is one set of reduced circumstances (to say the least) to another. It can get grinding, even before you get to the Great Famine, and once you do... Well, it's not a pleasant read for obvious reasons.
January 4, 2016
Meh. It was okay, but the title promised more than the book delivered. I really didn't see the potato rescuing the western world. The plot could be summed up thusly:
Europe didn't like or trust the potato. They they did. Then blight happened, and that was sad. America was pretty much always okay with the potato. The end.
I was hoping for more.
Europe didn't like or trust the potato. They they did. Then blight happened, and that was sad. America was pretty much always okay with the potato. The end.
I was hoping for more.
April 25, 2011
I really enjoyed this one. I found so much to think about in here. Just look at this list of themes up there - and this is supposed to be about potatoes! But it was amazing how much the 'humble spud' effected.
The potato was viewed with some suspicion early on. In England, this latest a surprisingly long time. In France and Ireland, people eventually loved it as an easy substitute for growing grain, because it took less labor and would grow in poorer soil, as well as being easier for poor working people to prepare. But in England, it was looked down on and considered only good enough for peasants and livestock. In the US, colonials loved it - any food is good food - and it was grown and eaten everywhere. The book also includes a good but brief chapter about the potato famine in Ireland, its causes and effects, the government response, and its effect on migration.
Much more interesting that you might expect. My main complaint is that the 'western world' of the title was misleading. What about the potato in Germany, Spain, and Italy? What about Russia? These countries were scarcely mentioned, which was unfortunate. Still, 4 stars.
The potato was viewed with some suspicion early on. In England, this latest a surprisingly long time. In France and Ireland, people eventually loved it as an easy substitute for growing grain, because it took less labor and would grow in poorer soil, as well as being easier for poor working people to prepare. But in England, it was looked down on and considered only good enough for peasants and livestock. In the US, colonials loved it - any food is good food - and it was grown and eaten everywhere. The book also includes a good but brief chapter about the potato famine in Ireland, its causes and effects, the government response, and its effect on migration.
Much more interesting that you might expect. My main complaint is that the 'western world' of the title was misleading. What about the potato in Germany, Spain, and Italy? What about Russia? These countries were scarcely mentioned, which was unfortunate. Still, 4 stars.
February 21, 2015
Of interest to anyone who enjoys the history or anthropology of food. Zuckerman explores the relationship between the acceptance of ==> reliance upon the potato as a food source and the dramatic population increases that shaped the history of the western world over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. He tracks the potato's transition from animal fodder to table staple, primarily in France, Great Britain and the United States and highlights the interplay of utility, social class, and tradition in shaping that transition. The book bogged down a bit (forgive the pun) in the sections on Irish landlord/tenant relations, but was well worth reading. Took a bit longer for me to get through than usual, because I kept getting hungry and having to stop to cook.
October 20, 2012
This book gives a gastronomical history of how the ubiquitous potato, has played an important role in shaping some of the most important events of the world.
Starting from the great famine in Ireland, the French revolution, feeding the teeming millions that worked for the industrial revolution in England and finally the food of the soldiers of the American Revolution, each chapter is a treat to read.
How I wish, somebody would do research and add an Indian perspective about how much we love aloo (Potato in Hindi).
A good read for people who call themselves foodies.
Starting from the great famine in Ireland, the French revolution, feeding the teeming millions that worked for the industrial revolution in England and finally the food of the soldiers of the American Revolution, each chapter is a treat to read.
How I wish, somebody would do research and add an Indian perspective about how much we love aloo (Potato in Hindi).
A good read for people who call themselves foodies.
July 1, 2009
Dude, it's about potatoes! And history. And the history of potatoes. And how potatoes affected history. Of course it gets 4/5! Now if only I could find a copy of "The History and Social Influence of the Potato" by Redcliffe N. Salaman, I'd be really happy!
January 12, 2014
Oh dear god, but this was dull. I picked it up thinking it would be like the book on salt I read last year, but unfortunately not. It was repetitive and dull and definitely not a book I would recommend.
Read
February 7, 2008in the middle of reading it, so far it's about potatoes.
May 29, 2012
I enjoy these micro-histories. This one drug on a little bit by the end, but was interesting. The potato: who knew?
July 15, 2017
If you're interested in the politics of land tenancy in Ireland, this is the book for you.
If you're interested in potatoes, keep looking.
If you're interested in potatoes, keep looking.
June 4, 2022
When I was a student in Belgium, frites stands were practically as ubiquitous as hot dog carts in New York City. Things have changed a bit now, but I think french-fried potatoes still compete with the waffle for Belgium's favourite street food. I was intrigued by Larry Zuckerman's book on the history of the potato and its place in civilisation. I was not disappointed. I now have learned more about the potato than I thought possible.
Most people associate the potato with Ireland (mostly because of the effects of the Great Famine in the 1800s), but the story of the potato begins in Peru where it was cultivated by the Incas in terraces much like the fields of northwestern Ireland. From Peru, the Spaniards brought it back to Spain where they used it primarily as an ornamental plant in the gardens. Apparently, the potato produces a purple flower that looks really nice in a formal garden. No one really thought of eating it, although it was sometimes fed to animals. From Spain it crossed to France, then to England and Ireland. Eventually, it was being grown all over Europe, but its appearance on the dinner table was somewhat long in coming. It seems that the first use of the potato at human tables was for decoration rather than consumption.
The potato really took off in Ireland since it required little effort to grow. It produced a substantial harvest from poor soil. For poor people, the potato became a supplement or even a substitute for bread. For poor peasants in Ireland (and elsewhere) the potato went from food for the animals to the almost exclusive diet of humans. This association of the potato with the poor gave it an association with poverty and the lower classes which persisted into the 20th century. Ironically, the potato was actually more nutritious than the white bread which graced the tables of the rich, supplying vitamins and minerals in abundance.
Today, the potato is seen as an important component of a healthy diet. After doing all the research about population trends, culinary movements, and economic patterns, I think Zuckerman ran out of energy to look at the contemporary place of the potato. He briefly mentions potato chips but doesn't dwell on the principal occupant of the supermarket snack food aisle. Nor does he talk about the place of the french fry in fast food. I seem to remember that not too long ago the big three fast-food chains were competing over the quality of their french fries.
Did the potato rescue the Western World? I'm not so sure. The potato still has its detractors (think couch potato), but its benefits certainly outweigh its disadvantages. So, maybe you shouldn't eat a whole bag of chips at one sitting, but you will certainly eat more than one.
Most people associate the potato with Ireland (mostly because of the effects of the Great Famine in the 1800s), but the story of the potato begins in Peru where it was cultivated by the Incas in terraces much like the fields of northwestern Ireland. From Peru, the Spaniards brought it back to Spain where they used it primarily as an ornamental plant in the gardens. Apparently, the potato produces a purple flower that looks really nice in a formal garden. No one really thought of eating it, although it was sometimes fed to animals. From Spain it crossed to France, then to England and Ireland. Eventually, it was being grown all over Europe, but its appearance on the dinner table was somewhat long in coming. It seems that the first use of the potato at human tables was for decoration rather than consumption.
The potato really took off in Ireland since it required little effort to grow. It produced a substantial harvest from poor soil. For poor people, the potato became a supplement or even a substitute for bread. For poor peasants in Ireland (and elsewhere) the potato went from food for the animals to the almost exclusive diet of humans. This association of the potato with the poor gave it an association with poverty and the lower classes which persisted into the 20th century. Ironically, the potato was actually more nutritious than the white bread which graced the tables of the rich, supplying vitamins and minerals in abundance.
Today, the potato is seen as an important component of a healthy diet. After doing all the research about population trends, culinary movements, and economic patterns, I think Zuckerman ran out of energy to look at the contemporary place of the potato. He briefly mentions potato chips but doesn't dwell on the principal occupant of the supermarket snack food aisle. Nor does he talk about the place of the french fry in fast food. I seem to remember that not too long ago the big three fast-food chains were competing over the quality of their french fries.
Did the potato rescue the Western World? I'm not so sure. The potato still has its detractors (think couch potato), but its benefits certainly outweigh its disadvantages. So, maybe you shouldn't eat a whole bag of chips at one sitting, but you will certainly eat more than one.
Read
February 23, 2021We got potatoes in the blood in this family. Great for the deep dive on peasant eating habits in early modern Europe. We have it so good, mate. Wish it expanded more in to the current context as potatoes-as-fast-food. Pretty dry overall--like a mouth full of baked russet without butter or sour cream.
November 23, 2025
Would recommend
September 7, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads #Food History
There are few foods as unglamorous as the potato. It has none of the aristocratic sheen of wine, none of the exotic allure of tea, and none of the decadent seductions of chocolate. Yet Larry Zuckerman, in his lively, incisive, and deeply researched book The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World, makes the case that this earthy tuber was one of the most transformative forces in Western history.
This is not just an agricultural story; it is a tale of empire, hunger, migration, class struggle, and survival. The potato’s journey from Andean terraces to European fields, and its role in shaping modern society, is so rich that Zuckerman’s subtitle—“rescued the Western world”—doesn’t feel like exaggeration.
Zuckerman begins in the highlands of the Andes, where potatoes were first domesticated by the Inca and their predecessors some 8,000 years ago. He describes with respect the astonishing biodiversity of potatoes in South America: thousands of varieties in different shapes, colours, and tastes, adapted to diverse microclimates. For the Andean peoples, potatoes were not just food but cosmology, medicine, and culture.
Here, Zuckerman shines in reminding readers that potatoes were not “discovered” by Europeans; they were meticulously cultivated by indigenous expertise. Stored as chuño (freeze-dried potatoes), they could last for years, sustaining armies and empires. The Inca state, with its roads and granaries, was powered as much by potatoes as by maize.
Then came the Columbian Exchange. When Spanish conquistadors reached the Andes in the 16th century, they carried potatoes back across the Atlantic. But acceptance in Europe was not immediate. Zuckerman is especially sharp in showing how suspicion surrounded the potato: it grew underground, it wasn’t in the Bible, it was linked to witchcraft and disease. For nearly two centuries, Europeans resisted the tuber.
The book traces the slow but dramatic transformation of potatoes from a marginal curiosity to a staple crop. Zuckerman emphasises figures like Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the French agronomist who championed potatoes during food shortages in the 18th century. Through both scientific persuasion and publicity stunts—hosting potato-themed banquets and planting potato fields guarded by soldiers to arouse curiosity—Parmentier convinced France that potatoes were fit for human consumption.
Once accepted, potatoes proved revolutionary. They produced more calories per acre than wheat or rye, were less susceptible to spoilage, and could grow in soils too poor for grains. For peasants across Europe—Irish, Russian, Polish, and German—the potato was nothing less than salvation.
Zuckerman’s narrative captures the irony: the very qualities that made potatoes lifesaving also made them politically potent. They enabled populations to expand, armies to march, and empires to consolidate. Potatoes, in other words, were geopolitics disguised as humble fare.
One of Zuckerman’s strongest arguments is that the potato fuelled Europe’s demographic explosion between the 17th and 19th centuries. By providing cheap, reliable calories, potatoes allowed families to grow larger, infant mortality to decline, and cities to swell with workers. The Industrial Revolution, he suggests, might not have been possible without the potato’s caloric punch.
Ireland is the most dramatic example. By the 18th century, Irish peasants had come to depend almost exclusively on the potato. A diet of potatoes and buttermilk was nutritionally robust enough to sustain a rapidly growing population. But it was also dangerously vulnerable: dependence on a single crop meant that blight could spell catastrophe.
The centrepiece of Zuckerman’s book—and its emotional core—is his treatment of the Great Irish Famine (1845–1852). When Phytophthora infestans (potato blight) struck, entire harvests were destroyed. Because Ireland’s poor were overwhelmingly reliant on the potato, famine swept the land with horrifying speed.
Zuckerman is unsparing in exposing how the famine was not merely a natural disaster but a political one. British policies exacerbated the crisis: exports of grain continued even as Irish peasants starved, and relief measures were inadequate, guided more by ideology (laissez-faire economics, fear of dependency) than by compassion. Over a million died, and another million emigrated, reshaping Irish society and fuelling diasporas that transformed America and beyond.
The famine illustrates both the promise and peril of the potato. It had enabled Ireland’s population to grow to over 8 million; it also left that population fatally exposed when disease struck. Zuckerman’s telling avoids melodrama, but his moral clarity is sharp. The famine was not simply a story of crop failure, but of colonial neglect and economic cruelty.
Beyond Ireland, Zuckerman expands the frame to show how potatoes shaped European geopolitics. In Russia and Prussia, potatoes became strategic crops, essential for feeding armies and supporting autocratic regimes. In Germany, Frederick the Great ordered peasants to plant potatoes as a matter of national security. During the Napoleonic Wars, potatoes sustained both soldiers and civilians under blockade.
Zuckerman’s point is that potatoes were not neutral. They were tools of statecraft, instruments of coercion as much as liberation. They allowed elites to extract labour from peasants while keeping them just nourished enough to survive. But they also gave peasants a measure of independence: a potato patch could keep a family alive even when grain prices soared.
Thus, potatoes were paradoxical—both an agent of control and a seed of resistance.
The story doesn’t end in Europe. Zuckerman turns to the Americas, where the potato returned in transformed form. In the United States, Irish immigrants carried both their trauma and their potato-based foodways. French fries, hash browns, and mashed potatoes eventually became staples of American cuisine, though their cultural baggage was lighter than in Europe.
Yet the potato also reveals the darker sides of American agribusiness. Zuckerman notes how industrial farming, monocultures, and reliance on chemicals echo the vulnerabilities of 19th-century Ireland. Today’s Russet Burbank potato, engineered for uniformity and fast-food chains, is both marvel and menace—a reminder that the potato’s lessons have not been fully learnt.
One of the pleasures of Zuckerman’s book is his attention to the potato in culture. He touches on art (Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters), literature (Dickens’ depictions of hunger), and folklore. Potatoes have been symbols of poverty and simplicity, but also of resilience and common humanity.
He shows how the potato is often invisible in history—overlooked precisely because it is so humble. Yet invisibility is itself revealing: the potato sustained the poor, whose lives are often marginalised in traditional histories. To write the history of the potato is to recover the history of those who lived close to the soil.
Zuckerman writes with clarity and conviction. His tone is neither academic nor sentimental, but engaged and humane. He moves easily between macro-history (population growth, empire) and micro-history (a peasant’s diet, a blight’s biology). This balance makes the book accessible without diluting its force.
His central claim—that the potato “rescued” the Western world—can feel bold, but by the end it is well earned. Without potatoes, Europe’s population growth would have stalled, industrialisation slowed, and empires weakened. The modern West, in short, might look radically different.
Placed alongside other single-food histories—Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and Power (sugar), Mark Kurlansky’s Salt, and Laura Martin’s Tea—Zuckerman’s potato book reminds us that history is edible. Commodities are not just background but protagonists. They embody human ingenuity, suffering, and survival.
The potato’s story, in particular, forces us to think about dependency, resilience, and vulnerability. It shows how abundance can breed fragility and how salvation can sow disaster. It also highlights the enduring entanglement of food and politics.
In our era of climate crisis, monoculture risks, and global hunger, the potato is not just a past lesson but a present warning.
Reading Zuckerman made me rethink every encounter with potatoes—French fries at a street cart, aloo in an Indian curry, boiled potatoes at a family table. They are comfort food, but they are also witnesses. Behind every potato is a lineage of survival, a shadow of famine, and a history of migration.
The most haunting part of the book for me was the Irish famine chapters. As someone steeped in literature and history, I knew the outlines—but Zuckerman’s combination of statistics, testimonies, and political critique left me shaken. The thought that one of history’s greatest humanitarian crises was bound up with something as ordinary as a potato is profoundly unsettling.
Yet there is also hope. The potato, despite its history of peril, remains a global staple. It is cheap, versatile, and adaptable. It continues to feed billions. Its lesson is that humility is power.
To conclude, this tome is an essential contribution to food history. It is at once sweeping and intimate, political and personal. It reminds us that the fate of nations often rests not on kings or battles but on crops and soil.
The potato may be humble, but in Zuckerman’s telling, it is heroic.
There are few foods as unglamorous as the potato. It has none of the aristocratic sheen of wine, none of the exotic allure of tea, and none of the decadent seductions of chocolate. Yet Larry Zuckerman, in his lively, incisive, and deeply researched book The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World, makes the case that this earthy tuber was one of the most transformative forces in Western history.
This is not just an agricultural story; it is a tale of empire, hunger, migration, class struggle, and survival. The potato’s journey from Andean terraces to European fields, and its role in shaping modern society, is so rich that Zuckerman’s subtitle—“rescued the Western world”—doesn’t feel like exaggeration.
Zuckerman begins in the highlands of the Andes, where potatoes were first domesticated by the Inca and their predecessors some 8,000 years ago. He describes with respect the astonishing biodiversity of potatoes in South America: thousands of varieties in different shapes, colours, and tastes, adapted to diverse microclimates. For the Andean peoples, potatoes were not just food but cosmology, medicine, and culture.
Here, Zuckerman shines in reminding readers that potatoes were not “discovered” by Europeans; they were meticulously cultivated by indigenous expertise. Stored as chuño (freeze-dried potatoes), they could last for years, sustaining armies and empires. The Inca state, with its roads and granaries, was powered as much by potatoes as by maize.
Then came the Columbian Exchange. When Spanish conquistadors reached the Andes in the 16th century, they carried potatoes back across the Atlantic. But acceptance in Europe was not immediate. Zuckerman is especially sharp in showing how suspicion surrounded the potato: it grew underground, it wasn’t in the Bible, it was linked to witchcraft and disease. For nearly two centuries, Europeans resisted the tuber.
The book traces the slow but dramatic transformation of potatoes from a marginal curiosity to a staple crop. Zuckerman emphasises figures like Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the French agronomist who championed potatoes during food shortages in the 18th century. Through both scientific persuasion and publicity stunts—hosting potato-themed banquets and planting potato fields guarded by soldiers to arouse curiosity—Parmentier convinced France that potatoes were fit for human consumption.
Once accepted, potatoes proved revolutionary. They produced more calories per acre than wheat or rye, were less susceptible to spoilage, and could grow in soils too poor for grains. For peasants across Europe—Irish, Russian, Polish, and German—the potato was nothing less than salvation.
Zuckerman’s narrative captures the irony: the very qualities that made potatoes lifesaving also made them politically potent. They enabled populations to expand, armies to march, and empires to consolidate. Potatoes, in other words, were geopolitics disguised as humble fare.
One of Zuckerman’s strongest arguments is that the potato fuelled Europe’s demographic explosion between the 17th and 19th centuries. By providing cheap, reliable calories, potatoes allowed families to grow larger, infant mortality to decline, and cities to swell with workers. The Industrial Revolution, he suggests, might not have been possible without the potato’s caloric punch.
Ireland is the most dramatic example. By the 18th century, Irish peasants had come to depend almost exclusively on the potato. A diet of potatoes and buttermilk was nutritionally robust enough to sustain a rapidly growing population. But it was also dangerously vulnerable: dependence on a single crop meant that blight could spell catastrophe.
The centrepiece of Zuckerman’s book—and its emotional core—is his treatment of the Great Irish Famine (1845–1852). When Phytophthora infestans (potato blight) struck, entire harvests were destroyed. Because Ireland’s poor were overwhelmingly reliant on the potato, famine swept the land with horrifying speed.
Zuckerman is unsparing in exposing how the famine was not merely a natural disaster but a political one. British policies exacerbated the crisis: exports of grain continued even as Irish peasants starved, and relief measures were inadequate, guided more by ideology (laissez-faire economics, fear of dependency) than by compassion. Over a million died, and another million emigrated, reshaping Irish society and fuelling diasporas that transformed America and beyond.
The famine illustrates both the promise and peril of the potato. It had enabled Ireland’s population to grow to over 8 million; it also left that population fatally exposed when disease struck. Zuckerman’s telling avoids melodrama, but his moral clarity is sharp. The famine was not simply a story of crop failure, but of colonial neglect and economic cruelty.
Beyond Ireland, Zuckerman expands the frame to show how potatoes shaped European geopolitics. In Russia and Prussia, potatoes became strategic crops, essential for feeding armies and supporting autocratic regimes. In Germany, Frederick the Great ordered peasants to plant potatoes as a matter of national security. During the Napoleonic Wars, potatoes sustained both soldiers and civilians under blockade.
Zuckerman’s point is that potatoes were not neutral. They were tools of statecraft, instruments of coercion as much as liberation. They allowed elites to extract labour from peasants while keeping them just nourished enough to survive. But they also gave peasants a measure of independence: a potato patch could keep a family alive even when grain prices soared.
Thus, potatoes were paradoxical—both an agent of control and a seed of resistance.
The story doesn’t end in Europe. Zuckerman turns to the Americas, where the potato returned in transformed form. In the United States, Irish immigrants carried both their trauma and their potato-based foodways. French fries, hash browns, and mashed potatoes eventually became staples of American cuisine, though their cultural baggage was lighter than in Europe.
Yet the potato also reveals the darker sides of American agribusiness. Zuckerman notes how industrial farming, monocultures, and reliance on chemicals echo the vulnerabilities of 19th-century Ireland. Today’s Russet Burbank potato, engineered for uniformity and fast-food chains, is both marvel and menace—a reminder that the potato’s lessons have not been fully learnt.
One of the pleasures of Zuckerman’s book is his attention to the potato in culture. He touches on art (Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters), literature (Dickens’ depictions of hunger), and folklore. Potatoes have been symbols of poverty and simplicity, but also of resilience and common humanity.
He shows how the potato is often invisible in history—overlooked precisely because it is so humble. Yet invisibility is itself revealing: the potato sustained the poor, whose lives are often marginalised in traditional histories. To write the history of the potato is to recover the history of those who lived close to the soil.
Zuckerman writes with clarity and conviction. His tone is neither academic nor sentimental, but engaged and humane. He moves easily between macro-history (population growth, empire) and micro-history (a peasant’s diet, a blight’s biology). This balance makes the book accessible without diluting its force.
His central claim—that the potato “rescued” the Western world—can feel bold, but by the end it is well earned. Without potatoes, Europe’s population growth would have stalled, industrialisation slowed, and empires weakened. The modern West, in short, might look radically different.
Placed alongside other single-food histories—Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and Power (sugar), Mark Kurlansky’s Salt, and Laura Martin’s Tea—Zuckerman’s potato book reminds us that history is edible. Commodities are not just background but protagonists. They embody human ingenuity, suffering, and survival.
The potato’s story, in particular, forces us to think about dependency, resilience, and vulnerability. It shows how abundance can breed fragility and how salvation can sow disaster. It also highlights the enduring entanglement of food and politics.
In our era of climate crisis, monoculture risks, and global hunger, the potato is not just a past lesson but a present warning.
Reading Zuckerman made me rethink every encounter with potatoes—French fries at a street cart, aloo in an Indian curry, boiled potatoes at a family table. They are comfort food, but they are also witnesses. Behind every potato is a lineage of survival, a shadow of famine, and a history of migration.
The most haunting part of the book for me was the Irish famine chapters. As someone steeped in literature and history, I knew the outlines—but Zuckerman’s combination of statistics, testimonies, and political critique left me shaken. The thought that one of history’s greatest humanitarian crises was bound up with something as ordinary as a potato is profoundly unsettling.
Yet there is also hope. The potato, despite its history of peril, remains a global staple. It is cheap, versatile, and adaptable. It continues to feed billions. Its lesson is that humility is power.
To conclude, this tome is an essential contribution to food history. It is at once sweeping and intimate, political and personal. It reminds us that the fate of nations often rests not on kings or battles but on crops and soil.
The potato may be humble, but in Zuckerman’s telling, it is heroic.
November 27, 2018
The book is about 18th and 19th century Ireland, Englend, France and US and how they adopted potatoe in their cuisines. What were the struggles and how it prevailed. It is not only about potatoe, it is more of a general cuisine and people lives of the period, what they eat and how they lived. There are a lot of segments from diaries and books from the period that tell this stories first hand. Sometimes author repeats some facts he already mentioned, but in general the book is good if you are interested in the topic.
October 3, 2013
The delicious potato was much reviled by the elite classes when first introduced to Europe in the 1500s, after its discovery in the high plains of the Andes. (The sweet potato, however, was much favored by Henry the Eighth for its sweetness and because of its reputed quality as an aphrodisiac.) Legend has it that the potato was first introduced to Ireland in 1590 by Sir Walter Raleigh. Ireland was the first European community to embrace this new root crop. Zuckerman lays out the history of its introduction, the resistance by the elites, the barriers--cultural, philosophical, religious--that made it difficult for the potato to make its way into the fields as a crop. And of course, there were practical social constructs we rarely think of--what passes for a kitchen and utensils? Zuckerman's lively style connects these points in a conversational narrative. But one thread runs throughout this history, that of elite attitudes towards the poor. As Zuckerman observes of our times, "Moreover, we're still debating whether poverty results from laziness or immorality . . . and it the poor deserve help. We, too, often feel that beggars are cynically taking us for a ride, and giving them money is throwing it away. We, too, have angry taxpayers who wonder why paying a sizable portion of their income isn't enough to keep people from using their doorsteps as latrines and motels. . . . Here's the question: Has our thinking evolved that far beyond the Victorian mind-set we instinctively criticize?"
Well worth the read. Nice little bibliography, too.
Well worth the read. Nice little bibliography, too.
October 9, 2008
The Potato was by far my favorite of the four food history books I read this spring. For one thing, Zuckerman is quite explicit about his focus on France, England, and Ireland, and lays out his reasoning for that focus persuasively. For another, the book is much less a string of historical tidbits about potatoes, and far more an integrated history of agriculture and the ways in which potato farming made sense in particular peasant economies. Zuckerman discusses Irish agricultural law and the peasant adoption of potatoes to grow food on marginal land in a culture where few farming families had draft animals or tools like plows; the way potatoes were adopted as a major food source during the industrial revolution in English cities, where working families didn't have the money, time, fuel, or cooking instruments to prepare other foods easily at home; and the more mixed adoption of the potato in France, where specific local conditions dictated whether the peasants in an area ate bread or potatoes. Although I'm making the material sound really boring, Zuckerman's discussion of these issues is lively and immediate, and he makes a good case for the way in which the potato--maligned as animal and peasant food--made it possible to feed more people on less land, and was an important component in the changing economic landscape of the time.
April 28, 2014
A book with a subtitle that shows that the author wanted to do big, majestic things with it: “How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World.” He did go big with it, but unfortunately he went so broad that he kind of left the potato itself off to the side. The book ended up being an interesting look at what people ate in England, Ireland, France, and the United States and a little bit about how the potato made inroads in each country after being a new vegetable starting in the 1500s and then essentially being either overlooked or looked down upon for many years. And there are a lot of interesting anecdotes in here (for instance, French chefs would carve potatoes into the shapes of olives so people would eat them). But he went pages and pages without actually mentioning the potato or how it fit into his narrative, and then almost ignored things like how breeding patterns helped change to potato into something that got more universal acceptance. And I know it was a lot of research to do what he did (11 pages of bibliography on the potato is a lot, I must say), but potatoes became very important in italian cooking and especially in Germany, as well as Spain. It’s hard to say you have shows the impact of the potato on the Western World without mentioning any of these countries. I did learn things from it, however, so that was good.
April 1, 2013
The author of this book is a historian's historian. He is conscience that his is writing what some call a "social history" and says so early on. And he is...but many of these secret histories, of which I read a lot, are actually not written by historians, or they're historians and something else (journalist actually write a lot of these sorts of books). Not this guy though, you read a whole chapter about the Great Potato Famine of Ireland and realize that he didn't talk a lot about the potato itself, but more like events that the potato witnessed. He's actually written a profound book about population growth, industry, and the nature of poverty and our reactions to it. Of particular interest is the comparison of the the potato in France and the potato in Ireland; nearly simultaneous timelines with many similarities but with some interesting differences as well.
September 24, 2012
This excellent microhistory really does cover everything you ever wanted to know about potatoes, from their introduction into Europe from South America to the Irish Potato blight and on to the creation of such modern staples as potato chips and fish and chips. Zuckerman covers social, legal, medical, public health, and sometimes even religious attitudes during the west's slow adoption and increasing dependence on the Noble Spud as a staple food source. The book is rigorously scholarly but written accessibly, making the wealth of statistical information discussed palatable. (I couldn't miss using the word "palatable" in reviewing a book about potatoes, could I?)
December 5, 2011
I liked this book, almost as much as I like potatoes. It's certainly a more scholarly read than both "The Story of Corn," which I was not able to finish on the first try for a number of reasons (I'll give it another try yet) and "America's First Cuisines," which is nonetheless a good read and suggests there's some good scholarly work behind it. If the reader doesn't have a particular interest in the anthropology/history of food, I expect he/she might find it a bit of a slog. It's not an easy, popular read like "The Sushi Economy," although this might have been Zuckerman's aim.
April 6, 2013
This is the first time I have read anything about a crop that contains such detail. I can't imagine how much time is put to the writing of this. It's more than just the history of the potato, it used the potato as a lens for looking at 17th-20th century Irish, English, French, and American society, exposing their pains, social class struggles, and attitudes. It is a long read, since every paragraph is filled with plenty of information drawn from mostly newspaper articles and personal diaries from the 17th-20th centuries.
May 28, 2016
Parts of it was interesting. Parts were a little to scholarly for my tastes, although I appreciated he did try to find the truth and not just takes statements at face value. The part about America was interesting but did not have much to do with the potato .
He is right, we still talk about the poor today the same way we did back then with morality and judgment.
I really felt sorry for the poor Irish, their lives seemed horrible. It's interesting the peasants in France were just as poor, but did not seem the same.
He is right, we still talk about the poor today the same way we did back then with morality and judgment.
I really felt sorry for the poor Irish, their lives seemed horrible. It's interesting the peasants in France were just as poor, but did not seem the same.
August 30, 2016
Interesting, although I found that some parts went into too much detail while others weren't detailed enough. The history and sociology surrounding the potato were interesting to read, but like a previous reviewer I would have liked to see more about the potato itself, different varieties, the difference between modern potatoes and the original Andean version, etc. Overall I enjoyed it though... and it made me crave potatoes!
February 26, 2008
Who knew one little tuber could be so interesting? Around the world and through the ages as our relationship with this edible member of the nightshade family evolves on our collective dinner plate. Pay hommage to the humble spud, as it sustained our ancestors and still makes for a darn tasty side dish. Hope he writes a book on kholrabi next.
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