Mango: A Global History

Siblings Kirker and Newman (Coconut), a historian and a scientist, respectively, serve up an appealing introduction to a fruit they claim sparks a stronger “passion” than any other in the “culinary experience of the Western world, Europe, or Asia.” Originating in northeast India about 60 million years ago, mangos were spread through Southeast Asia by Buddhist pilgrims in the fourth century BCE, funneled into trade routes by Portuguese explorers in the 16th century, and arrived in North America with other “exotic foodstuffs” around 1750. Across that time span and beyond, the fruit has featured in literature, poems, and parables; been prized as a culinary delicacy; and sparked unlikely national crazes (after Chairman Mao gave a shipment of mangoes to workers and students “as a reward... for their revolutionary valour” during the Cultural Revolution, the fruit became a “treasured icon,” with the Communist Party manufacturing everything from mango-themed soaps to cigarettes). Today mangoes are grown in more than 100 countries, and scientists and producers are working to improve growing, packaging, and shipping methods. Kirker and Newman’s exhaustive research turns up plenty that informs and entertains (mangoes are a “hell of a fruit,” former president George W. Bush declared during a 2006 visit to India), though the sheer abundance of minutiae can sometimes sidetrack the proceedings. Still, readers with a taste for trivia will eat this up. (Aug.)