Amber Waves: The Extraordinary Biography of Wheat, from Wild Grasses to World Megacrop

Ecologist Zabinski debuts with a pleasant but cluttered account of the long history of humans and wheat. She goes back to the point when, 13,000 years ago, settlers along the Euphrates first harvested, charred, and ground wild seed for food. Musing that “as with most relationships, our relationship with wheat has grown more complex with time,” Zabinski notes how agricultural practices have driven social and political organization, and speculates that wheat cultivation led to militarization, as armies were used to keep laborers in the fields and to protect farmers from outside raiders. In elaborating on the interconnections between wheat production and culture, she shares some worthwhile historical tidbits, such as how the need to grow wheat across North America’s “wide temperature and precipitation gradients” gave rise, in the 19th century, to breeding as a modern science, or how Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was motivated by his desire for Ukraine’s fertile soils. However, on the whole, her historical analysis is overly generalized, especially alongside off-puttingly involved and complex technical and scientific discussions, such as of the workings of photosynthesis, or of different farming techniques—irrigation, crop rotations, and use of fertilizers and pesticides. Nonspecialists will have a hard time sifting through this scattered collection of wheat-related topics. (Sept.)