"From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning...

The bestselling author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses brilliantly charts how foods have transformed human culture through the ages--from ancient times when the first civilizations were built on barley and wheat in the Near East, millet and rice in Asia, and corn and potatoes in the Americas, to modern times when the foods we choose in the supermarket connect us to global debates about trade, development, the environment, and the adoption of...

An illustrated atlas of the United States including relief maps of every state, region, and territory with information about major cities, geography, industry, agriculture, history, and people.

An account of all the new and surprising evidence now available for the beginnings of the earliest civilizations that contradict the standard narrativeWhy did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of todays states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states,...

"We are what we eat: this aphorism contains a profound truth about civilization, one that has played out on the world historical stage over many millennia of human endeavor. Using the colorful diaries of a sixteenth-century merchant as a narrative guide, Empires of Food vividly chronicles the fate of people and societies for the past twelve thousand years through the foods they grew, hunted, traded, and ate - and gives us fascinating, and devastating,...