Beans: A History

by Ken Albala

Overview

This is the story of the bean, the staple food cultivated by humans for over 10,000 years.

From the lentil to the soybean, every civilization on the planet has cultivated its own species of bean. The humble bean has always attracted attention - from Pythagoras' notion that the bean hosted a human soul to St. Jerome's indictment against bean-eating in convents (because they "tickle the genitals"), to current research into the deadly toxins contained in the most commonly eaten beans.

Over time, the bean has been both scorned as "poor man's meat" and praised as health-giving, even patriotic. Attitudes to this most basic of foodstuffs have always revealed a great deal about a society. Featuring a new preface from author Ken Albala, Beans: A Historytakes the reader on a fascinating journey across cuisines and cultures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350022270
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/09/2017
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	457,166
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Ken Albala is Professor of History and Director of Food Studies at the University of the Pacific, USA. He is the author of The Food History Reader and A Cultural History of Food in the Renaissance, both published by Bloomsbury.

Table of Contents

List of Recipes
Preface, Acknowledgements and a Note on Recipes
1. Introduction
2. Lentils: Fertile Crescent
3. Lupines: Europe and Andes
4. Fava Beans: Europe
5. Peas, Chickpeas and Pigeon Peas
6. Oddballs and Villains
7. Mung and the Vignas: India
8. Black-eyed Peas: Africa, Soul Food
9. Phaseolus vulgaris: Mexico and the World
10. Limas and the Lesser Phaseoli: Andes
11. Tepary beans: Native Americans
12. Soy: China, Japan and the World
Postscript
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

A vividly entertaining history of the humble bean takes the reader on a curious, surprising and exciting journey across epochs, continents and cultures.
Raymond Blanc

Charming.
New York Times

I would strongly urge a reading of Beans by Ken Albala which entertainingly unravels that most complicated of legumes through space and time.
The Guardian

From the Publisher

…in essays that span the globe, from the Fertile Crescent, where garbanzo beans are beloved, to China, where soybeans were first cultivated, Albala sketches their histories and wallows in their sometimes retrograde status, lingering on the oddball members of the family Fabaceae, like the hairy vetch and the bitter vetch, not to mention the Kentucky coffee tree.
—The New York Times

John T. Edge

Here is the first biography of beans, presented by Ken Albala in vivid prose. Gut-buster or aphrodisiac, lowly legume or savior of civilization, the bean is more significant than we ever realized.

Darra Goldstein

Beans is a lyrical book. It is a tale well told filled with unusual twists and turns with surprises popping up in almost every paragraph.

editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drin Andrew F. Smith

Lucky Beans, who have at last found their Homer. Who knew that the history of the Western world and parts of Asia, could be illumined through the evolution of the lowly bean in its multiple forms from fava to soy? No one is better equipped than this skilled historian to wrap history, science, legend, folklore and fakelore in an entertaining narrative that delights while it informs. This is the most digestible bean dish I've ever encountered and all I want is more.

author of The Story of Corn and I Hear America Coo Betty Fussell

[A] vividly entertaining history of the humble bean.

Saveur Raymond Blanc

Who ever knew that beans were so complicated and interesting. Told in fascinating detail by Ken Albala, Beans, A History, is an instructional book that reads like a novel.

Chef Charlie Palmer