Category: Book Reviews

Reviews of books featuring a summary of the book and links to related material

Dec 11 2025

Book review: Pathfinders – The Golden Age of Arabic Science by Jim Al-Khalili

I recently read Science and Islam by Ehsan Masood having struggled to decide whether to read it, or Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science by Jim Al-Khalili – it turns out I read both. This is a review of Pathfinders. In reading al-Khalili’s book I was looking for a bit more science than Science and Islam offered.

Al-Khalili is an interesting author for this topic, he was born and raised in Baghdad so learnt something of Arabic Science through school – visiting some of the key sites and living in the city where the Golden Age started. He is also conscious of his separate Persian identity – his family are from Iran.

The book covers the history of the Islamic Empire briefly at the beginning before a series of thematic chapters finishing with one on the decline of Arabic Science during the early modern period and the rise of science in Europe during the Renaissance and a final chapter on Islam and Science in the modern era. As well as notes there are a couple of appendices: one a glossary of scientists, a handy addition with the number of scientists introduced in the book, and an interesting 2D timeline which showed both regimes (such as the Abbasids) and location (from Spain to Iran) which I found really helpful. In a break from my tradition, I reproduce it here.

Timeline: The Islamic World from Antiquity to the Beginning of the Modern Period from Pathfinders by Jim Al-Khalili

Much of the book is focussed on Baghdad where the translation project kicked off under the reign of the seventh Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun in the 9th century, alongside this a number of high profile Arab scientist worked, adding to that which they translated. There is an emphasis here on the translation from Persian and Indian sources as well as Greek. Al-Khalili sees the translation of Persian sources and those relating astrology as a bigger motivation than I think is commonly accepted.

I arrived at Pathfinders and Islam and Science by consulting my Bluesky followers, they favoured the Ehsan Masood book although Ehsan Masood liked Jim Al-Khalili’s book for his better access to Arabic sources. I can see why my history of science crowd were not so pleased with Pathfinders. In several places Al-Khalili casts aspersions on historians which I imagine is grating coming from a theoretical physicist and populariser of science.

Perhaps the most significant deviation from orthodoxy in his treatment of al-Ma’mun’s House of Wisdom. Al-Khalili tends to the strong view of it as a proto-University or research centre combining both a library and a workplace for scholars. The more mainstream view amongst historians gives it the status of a library, and on the other extreme there are those who doubt its very existence.

It’s difficult to do justice to the range of scientific subjects covered in Pathfinders, chapters include chemistry, astronomy (several times), numbers, algebra, philosophy, and medicine. Topics such as the invention of zero, and measurements of the size of the earth and optics are discussed in considerable technical detail.

The surprising thing for me was how long it took Arabic/Indian numbers to take hold in Europe (the French Audit Office was still using Roman numerals in the 18th century), and people like Simon Stevin, mathematician, were using their own odd formulation of decimal numbers in the 16th century. Some of this was due to a reluctance to use Arabic inventions apparently this also slowed the uptake of coffee in Western Europe.

Geber the Alchemist (Jabir ibn-Hayyan) gets a chapter pretty much of his own, Al-Khalili describes him as the founder of chemistry. His publication record is obscured by the fact that his name seems to have been attached as author to documents for several centuries after his death. What he actually wrote could be rather cryptic and it is from him that the English word “gibberish” comes. Jabir wrote on both chemistry and its mystical twin, alchemy. He appears to have attracted more opprobrium for this than Isaac Newton who also studied alchemy.

As an aside at the end of the chapter on physicists Al-Khalili points out that Al-Haytham, al-Razi and al-Biruni were using the scientific method long before it was supposedly invented in the early 17th century by Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.

Although Baghdad was central in the early years of the Golden Age – the 9th and 10th centuries – later on Islamic Spain particularly Cordoba were important. Even after the Mongol sacking of Baghdad in 1256 observational astronomy continued by Arab scientists under Mongol rulers. Al-Khalili’s point here is that Arabic science continued beyond the traditional golden era and was only surpassed by Europe in the mid-fifteenth century. He sees the failure of printing in Arabic to take off as one of the reasons for its final decline. He notes that may have been due in part to an early printing of the Qur’an containing errors which would have been considered a serious offence.

Al-Khalili draws a parallel between the Abbasid translation effort, and the Renaissance translation work sponsored by the Medici family in Florence. Also important in bringing Greek and other works via Arabic was Toledo which became a Christian centre for learning after the fall of the Islamic Empire in Spain.

As a Western European brought up in the seventies and eighties, I was taught that the Renaissance as an effort of translating works directly from ancient Greece and the scientific method came out of Western European thought. In truth it was part of a more continuous process with the work of Arabic scholars spanning the gap back to ancient Greece with translations to Latin from Arabic. Al-Khalili uses the example of Copernicus who cites a number of Arabic scholars but his publications, and historical work over the last 100 years or so, show that the influences may well go deeper.

I enjoyed Pathfinders, I liked the focus on the science side of things, having had a more thorough coverage of the political side of things from Masood’s book. I also liked that some of Al-Khalili’s upbringing in Baghdad came through. It has prompted me to look up books on Indian science in the first millennia and pre-Renaissance science in Europe.

Nov 19 2025

Book review: Kindred – Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes

This review is of Kindred – Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes, a book of everything we know about Neanderthals. The aim of the author is to be fully up to date and reveal some of the conversations that academics working on Neanderthals are having now. The story is told across 16 thematic chapters.

Neanderthals first appeared approximately 400,000 years ago and became extinct around 40,000 years ago. Know Neanderthal sites were long concentrated in Western Europe, particularly France and Spain but more recently remains have been found much further East, well into Asia. They shared the world with early H. Sapiens and the Denisovans.

Neanderthals lived against a backdrop of repeated Ice Ages but they were but there were lengthy warmer periods, in fact the Eemian period, centred on 100,000 years ago was warmer than today.

The first Neanderthal remains were excavated in 1812-16 but not recognised as such. The original eponymous remains were found in the Neander valley south west of Dusseldorf in 1856, a Neanderthal skull was discovered in Gibraltar in 1848 but not recognised as such until 1864. These remains entered the scientific time when (white, male) Western European scientists were eagerly trying to demonstrate the superiority of the white race and so they were seen in this light. I wonder whether, if they were discovered now, they would be considered a separate species.

The remains we have amount to several hundred individuals, including 30 or so nearly complete skeletons, DNA sampling has been done on 30 or so individuals with high resolution genomes measured for 3. The remains cover individuals from stillborn infants, through children and adolescents to adults. Individuals over 50 are rare, this is true across all of the archaeological record; estimating the age of an older individual from bones is hard, and they are more fragile. Many of the skeletons shows signs of injury and disease.

The Neanderthal bones paint a picture of a species very similar to us, a little chunkier with well-developed upper arms. They appear to have been highly mobile which reflects modern hunter-gatherer societies.

A lot has happened in Neanderthal studies since I first learned of them in the eighties. Archaeological techniques have improved greatly, isotopic analysis to tease out diet and migrations and most recently DNA analysis have brought great insights. From an archaeological point of view the earliest excavations in the mid 19th century were fairly haphazard and even after that excavation tended to focus on big bones and stone tools (lithics, as they are referred to in this book). Experimental archaeology means we have a very detailed understanding of how lithics are made.

Nowadays everything is collected in an excavation, and recorded in enormous detail. This means that, for example, lithics and stone fragments can be refitted to their core (the stone from which they were all made) which enables us to identify different “technology” strands for the production of stone tools. Neanderthal lithics were not just the result of bashing rocks together. They clearly had a very firm grasp of the qualities of the materials they used, where best to source stone, how to best process them and how to repair them. This goes way beyond the tool use of modern apes. Early H. Sapiens lithic technology is arguably more advanced but it is not night and day. It is not just stone that Neanderthals understood, they also worked with bone, animal skins, resins from birch – again very selective of the materials they used. They butchered animals to get the most nutritious and high calorie cuts. The Schöningen spears are a set of wooden Neanderthals spears preserved in sediment on the edge of an ancient lake shore dating back at least 200,000 years.

Hearths form an important part of the archaeological record for Neanderthals, in caves under appropriate conditions we can see fires that represent perhaps just a few days stay – the smoke from them is trapped in flowstone the material from which stalagmites are made. They paint a picture of small groups returning to locations over periods of thousands of years. Cave sites are central to the archaeology of Neanderthals – it wasn’t clear to me whether this is simply what is preserved (camps out in the open would be less likely to survive) or whether Neanderthals spent significant time in caves. In any case they are places of repeated visits rather than long term stays. Wragg highlights another preservation bias, we see more nearly complete skeletons than we expect and more delicate children’s bones. This suggests special treatment of the dead, there is also evidence in the form of butchery marks on Neanderthal bones suggest ritual cannibalism and very limited evidence of decoration of corpses.

Perhaps even more surprisingly there is evidence for Neanderthal art, most strikingly the Bruniquel Cave stalagmite structures dating to 176,000 years ago. There are also traces of pigments on a number of artefacts and also patterns carved into bone.

Neanderthals as a distinct group disappeared approximately 40,000 years ago, it is not clear why they died out. Prior to their extinction the DNA evidence shows that they interbred with H. Sapiens several times over a periods of many thousands of years. We retain a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA from this time. Their demise may simply have been down to chance, the humans found in Western Europe today are not the descendants of the earliest H. Sapiens found in the area – we originate from further East. Perhaps the disappearance of the Neanderthals is something similar, a chance repopulation after climatic change .

I was interested to see Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children novels cited a couple of times as an inspiration for Wragg and other archaeologists working on Neanderthals. I remember reading the books avidly at some point in the 1980s, Auel was clearly in advance of their time showing Neanderthals in a rather more subtle light.

I came away from Kindred with a picture of Neanderthals very similar to my distant H. Sapiens ancestors, at a glance it seems a Neanderthal and their encampments would look very similar to those of H. Sapiens. At this point I wonder whether it is valid to consider them a separate species. Are they a boxer dog to H. Sapiens border collie?

Oct 08 2025

Book review: Science and Islam – A History by Ehsan Masood

My next review is of Science and Islam: A History by Ehsan Masood. It follows on from a lot of reading I’ve done around the history of science in Western Europe and the US. It also fills a gap between books I’ve read on the Iron Age and Roman Period and the Early Modern Period. Much of the action takes place in the so called Dark Ages – a time where in my part of North West England Roman ruins were collecting pigeon droppings and little other archaeology survives!

Science and Islam is comprised of three parts, the first is an overview of the politics of the Islamic Empire from the 7th century until the Mongol invasion 13th century with an aside regarding the Tartar invasion in the 14th century. The second part covers sciences thematically. The final, shorter part, covers philosophy, the impact of Islamic science on Western European science in the 16th century and beyond and the post-colonial landscape.

Islam was founded by the Prophet Muhammad in 610CE, he died in 632CE. A series of four Caliphs built the Islamic Empire by taking over the Persian Empire and chunks of the Byzantine Empire in the following three decades. The Empire would reach Spain in 711CE.

The Umayyads were the first caliphate dynasty, they used Damascus as their capital, but were deposed by the Abbasids in 747CE who went on to found their capital in Baghdad. The Empire managed to retain a single leader, or Caliph until 909CE when the Fatamid Caliphate was established in Cairo. Subsequently a caliphate was established in Córdoba, Spain in 929CE. Each of these capitals became a seat of learning.

Science in the Islamic Empire started with a translation project commenced under the Abbasid regime in Baghdad which sought to translate scholarly works principally from Ancient Greece but also from Persia and India. It was conducted by Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars with a focus on practical texts rather than literature – it struck me that this was echoed by the Renaissance in Western Europe some time later. The crudest translations were simply word for word transcriptions which often led to near gibberish. More thoughtful translators translated for meaning and often added their own commentary – a start to new science. The translation enterprise was boosted by the arrival of paper in Baghdad in 751CE from China.

The Islamic Empire lingered on as the Ottoman Empire until after the First World War although it had largely lost its interest in science. The golden age of the Islamic Empire ended with the Mongol invasions from the East in the 13th century. The Islamic Empire finally left Spain in 1492 although from the 13th century all that remained was the small Emirate of Granada.

The thematic chapters of Islam and Science cover medicine, astronomy, maths, chemistry and mechanical devices. The impact of Arabic scientists is visible in our language: in astronomy with star names like Aldebaran, Rigel, Betelgeuse; chemistry has alkali, alcohol, alchemy, and chemistry; maths has algebra and algorithm.

Medicine was important in the Islamic Empire, initially they followed the Greek physician Galen’s ideas which were derived from Hippocrates’ four humours model of medicine. By the 9th century some were questioning aspects of Galen’s work – his human anatomy was rather suspect since he relied on animal dissections. Later Ibn-Sina’s (latin: Avicenna) Canon of Medicine summarised all of medical knowledge from Galen but also Persian, Chinese and Indian medicine – it was in print for six centuries. Hospitals were established in the nineth century onwards and many remained open for centuries. Medical trials were seen as an accepted part of medicine.

Islamic practice makes three demands on astronomy – timing for five prayers a day, the direction to Mecca, and the 12 months of the year. Sophisticated measurement is not absolutely required for this but in practice each mosque had its own timekeeper  – a muwaqqit – so their was a lot of expertise in astronomy around, and a lot of observations were being made. More so after Ptolemy’s work on celestial motions was translated into Arabic which led Islamic astronomers to compile tables of celestial motion and compare them to Indian and Greek measurements. Ptolemy’s work is fatally flawed because it assumes a geocentric system with motion built from an ever increasing number of epicycles. The Islamic astronomers realised there were problems with this model and made some attempts to fix them but retained geocentricity. There is some evidence that Copernicus knew of this work when he proposed his heliocentric model.

As for maths, in the West we use “Arabic Numerals”, in Arabic these are referred to as “Indian Numerals” this is a result of the work of Al-Khwarizmi, who was born in 786CE. Essentially he popularised “Indian numerals” by translating Indian mathematical works. It is from him that we get “algebra”, interestingly his algebra was expressed in words not symbols, and was invented at the behest of his Caliph in an effort to simplify Islamic law around inheritance. I am bemused that mathematics, often seen as the “purist” of sciences, developed from accountancy and law. In the 11th century Omar Khayyam produced geometric solutions to cubic equations and also calculated the length of the year very precisely. Islamic scholars also developed trigonometry from the work of Greek and Indian scholars.

The chapter on chemistry talks mainly about Jabir ibn-Hayyan (latin: Geber) from the 8th century. A large number of texts are attributed to him covering many experimental methods, equipment, processes (such as distillation and reduction) as well as chemicals like sulphuric and nitric acid. In common with the Early Modern Period in Western Europe, alchemy and chemistry existed side by side.

The brothers Jafar-Muhammad, Ahmad and Al-hasan known as Banu Musa were adopted to the House of Wisdom in Baghdad under the reign of Caliph al-Mamun in the 9th century. They were involved in the translation project but went on to describe one hundred mechanical toys in their Book of Ingenious Devices – many were powered by pressurised water. The pinnacle of Islamic engineering was Badi al-Zaman al-Jazari whose 1206 book, sometimes called Automata, described how to build 50 complex automata.

The Islamic Empire had been in contact with Europe through the medieval period, one gets the impression of science in Western Europe being kickstarted by contact with the Islamic Empire as it went into decline in the 13th century. It is clear that European scholars were familiar with Arabic sources in the Early Modern Period but tended not to cite them – the strong citation culture we see in modern science is a 19th century invention.

A couple of times Masood talks about Islam being easy to follow as an adherent – although one can make sophisticated determinations of time for prayers, and the direction of Mecca it is not strictly required so the religion itself does not make great demands on science. I found this a bit puzzling since it seems to me that this is the case for most religions worshipped now. I wonder whether it is a comparison with Sumerian and Egyptian systems or whether it is to highlight that science is not a necessity to Islam.

I found this a great introduction to the medieval Islamic Empire and Islamic science in the 7th to 16th centuries. It is quite brief and readable. For me the context of the Islamic Empire was very useful since it was something of which I was completely ignorant. As a scientist I would have preferred a bit more depth to the science and scientists but with the inclusion of the background material I needed on the Islamic Empire it would have made a rather longer book.

Sep 22 2025

Book review: Untypical by Pete Wharmby

Untypical by Pete Wharmby is a book about the personal experience of autism, and ways you can help autistic people in your life*. I picked it up because my son is on the waiting list for an autism assessment (1 year in and counting), and I have suspicions about myself – my wife’s suspicions are stronger!

Wharmby worked as a teacher for some time before a diagnosis of autism after the birth of his daughter and a bout of depression, he stopped teaching as a result of the COVID pandemic and is now self-employed as an author and speaker on autism. The book is very personal, I found it compelling reading.

Untypical is divided into 8 chapters covering different aspects of autism and life. Each chapter includes some bullet points on how you can help an autistic person, which can be summarised as “show some empathy given the information in this book” but you’ll need to read the book to get the details.

The first couple of chapters are on socialising and friends. The problem with socialising is not knowing the rules of communication, which are unwritten. Many autistic people have a phobia of telephones as a device for talking to people because the number of cues as to how to respond are reduced still further. Online friendship often works very well for them though. I am the most sociable person in my household (this really isn’t saying much) and the most likely to use a telephone although, with the exception of talking to parents, it is a last resort. I remember not feeling extrovert and sociable for a very large part of my life, nowadays I find it useful in addressing anxiety but I feel like I’m simulating being sociable. For autistic people this type of simulation is called masking, and it can be exhausting to maintain. Later, talking about the transition to university, Wharmby says that he used alcohol, probably to excess, to cope with the social side of university – this too sounds familiar.

Wharmby talks about falling into university almost by accident, it was the easiest next step having obtained good A-level results. This is the subject of the next chapter, “Tying shoelaces and Other Daily Challenges” which talks about the issues autistic people can have with getting started on something (autistic inertia), executive function (working towards a goal) and PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance). If you are interested in PDA then When the Naughty Step Doesn’t Work by Dr Naomi Fisher and Eliza Fricker is well worth a read. This isn’t to say autistic people can’t do goal-oriented tasks – they just need to be cast in the right way. I think here of Alfred Wainwright’s Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, completed with machine-like precision over a 10 year period. Wainwright may or may not have been autistic but nevertheless his Pictorial Guide looks exactly like the product of a “special interest”. I feel the same way about much of my career, a lot of it was down to following the easiest path boosted by my “special interest” driven abilities.

In the context of autism a “special interest” or monotropism is a strong focus on a single subject. They provide a way of regulating moods and managing stress. The autistic sensorium is very cluttered and finding a single point of focus is soothing. Wharmby talks about computer games, Minecraft, Pokémon Go, Lego and trains as examples of his “special interests”. His go-to task for immediate stress relief is to read a Wikipedia page about a steam train. As I write I am just entering my weekly gas, electric and solar panel meter readings into a spreadsheet, a dataset which stretches back to 2004. My dad kept a notebook in the glove box of his car where, usually my mum, wrote the mileage, volume of petrol bought and cost whenever they visited a garage. I was very confused when I discovered my wife’s car had no such book!

The chapter on school is close to my heart, it is the reason my son is on a waiting list for an autism assessment. For autistic children school is a nightmare, on top of the forced socialisation they are usually very overwhelming sensory environments. We found that the “need for justice” mentioned later in Untypical is also an issue, particularly around group “punishments”. Wharmby observes that much “bad behaviour” can be attributed to child reaching the point of autistic meltdown. He has some words on the nightmare of group work which will speak to many adults. This chapter is very timely since the Education Select Committee’s SEND Inquiry report is very keen on inclusion in mainstream schools as a solution to the SEND crisis – the committee have noted that the Department of Education has failed to define what this means. Wharmby notes that when he was at school in the 1990s refusal to go to school did not appear to be an option. Attendance in school dropped after the the COVID pandemic – I think it demonstrated that school was not the only place to learn for a very large number of children and their parents. In addition the restrictions of the COVID pandemic pushed some autistic people into meltdown – all the social interaction rules changed, and then changed back again as normal life resumed.

The issues with work are largely those of school, with uncontrolled environments and people all over the place. He calls out hot-desking specifically. Wharmby also mentions that autistic people can be very sensitive to criticism (hence my footnote to this post). The most stressful part of my working life has been annual assessments, this are critical by design – the company typically wants to see a distribution in “grades” and will tend to criticism rather than support. I can also say this is stressful for a manager. The same applies in redundancy processes, the company will seek to show you are not up to the job in order to smooth your exit from their point of view.

Chapter 7 talks a bit about the overlap of autism and ADHD with the resulting restless brain. This is where “stimming” comes in. Stimming is a variety of repetitive actions (every autistic person has their favourite) which provide some relief from stress – these can be disturbing to the neurotypical. This chapter also talks about the stresses of all forms of travel for autistic people usually through unpredictability and crowded and noisy environments. I was struck with his comments on struggling with mindfulness meditation as a way of providing relaxation, I too have struggled with mindfulness – finding it incredibly difficult to focus on just my breath, for example, or dispassionately observing my thoughts passing by.

The final chapter is on the autistic need for justice, mentioning Greta Thunberg’s campaigning on climate change (Thunberg is autistic), and also intersectionality – the overlap of the autistic community with the trans community in particular but also the neglected areas of being a woman and autistic and black and autistic. He highlights a couple of online resources which provide wider coverage of the autistic community – I’ve signed up to the Neuroclastic newsletter.

I have to say that overall it is a bit of a harrowing read, Wharmby has a nice writing style but the continual state of stress and anxiety he finds himself in is oppressive for the reader let alone the author!

Wharmby writes near the end of the book that he considers himself an imposter as an autistic person, something that he attributes to his late diagnosis. I must admit to feeling the same, I don’t think I’m as autistic as he is but so much in this book struck a chord with me. At the age of 55, and semi-retired, I don’t see the point in seeking a diagnosis, for my son I see it as useful but I must admit to some qualms about medicalising him for the sake of fairly limited support. I also worry that owning up to autism will not help secure a job.

The rising diagnosis of autism is a hot topic currently, to me it seems that there have always been a lot of autistic people but we never recognised it as a distinct thing, even in white men and boys, let alone women and girls or any other ethnicity. If we look back the signs were there: my dad’s petrol consumption recording, the male Hopkinson’s all stimming as they organised themselves for a family photo, the trainspotters, a whole load of scientists who recorded detailed data on all many of things…

Untypical is definitely worth reading: it either describes you, someone you know or someone you will interact with and more knowledge can only be a good thing. It’s important because life expectancy for autistic people is much lower than for others, and with some adaption their/our lives could be so much better.

*For the benefit of Pete – this is not a critical review, my reviews are descriptive much to the chagrin of professional historians!

Sep 15 2025

Book review: Six Thousand Years of Bread by H.E. Jacob

Six thousand years of bread by H.E. Jacob is an idiosyncratic book, I picked it up because I was interested in the history of bread. It covers a great deal of history and religion with bread (and hunger) a central theme. I had expected a more technical focus on flour, yeast and the bread making process over time.

The author, Heinrich Eduard Jacob was a German-Jew – arrested by the Nazis in 1938, imprisoned in Dachau and then Buchenwald before being released and emigrating to the United States. He worked as a journalist and author throughout his life. Six Thousand Years was published in English in 1944, the result of 20 years of research.

Six Thousand Years is divided into six “books” with each book comprised of a number of chapters – about 36 in total. To avoid confusion I’ll refer to them as sections, the sections are as follows:

  1. The Bread of Prehistoric Man
  2. Bread in the Ancient World
  3. Bread in the Middle Ages
  4. Bread in the Early Americas
  5. Bread in the Nineteenth Century
  6. Bread in our Time

The first section on The Bread of Prehistoric Man covers the domestication of grain and the invention of the plough. Jacob lists the species domesticated grass from millet (earliest), oats, barley and wheat (also early), rye (late classical) and maize, suggesting Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) as the source of wheat based on the diversity of species there. The modern view is that domestication happened further north in the Fertile Crescent centred on Mesopotamia. He locates the invention of the plough in Mesopotamia although he mentions China, he thinks the ancient ploughs found there were too sophisticated to have been invented there. I think this reflects the understanding of China in the West at the time of writing.

Bread in the Ancient World covers the invention of bread in the Ancient World, primarily in Egypt where leavened (sourdough) bread is believed to have been invented. There are tomb paintings from the period showing Egyptian bakeries. Bread was a de facto currency alongside beer, and was very central to Egyptian life. Herodotus referred to the Egyptians as “bread eaters” and made fun of their habit of kneading dough with their feet. Also included in this section are the symbolism of bread in Judaism, early Christianity. The parts on Greece are oriented around mythology and religion whilst Rome is more political. I was surprised the degree to which wheat was imported to Greece and Rome from Egypt and the area around the Black Sea.

After the fall of the Roman Empire a lot of agricultural knowledge was lost, this led in part to an outbreaks of ergotism most notably in 10th century France. Also lost was knowledge of water (grain) mills, and certainly an understanding as to why they were prone to exploding (flour dispersed in air is very explosive). A lot of the background to this section is the animosity between the peasant growing and harvesting grain, and the miller – often milling on behalf of a lord who banned milling in the home, the baker and the townsfolk. There is also a section here on transubstantiation and the Reformation, as well as hunger – which was a recurring feature of life in the Middle Ages. Hunger seems to have arisen largely because of the way society was structured with the peasants growing grain very restricted in what they could do with the grain they had grown, and obliged to pay significant tithes.

Moving to the Americas we learn about the introduction of maize and potatoes to the West from the Americas. Again Jacob seems to be a bit mystified that non-Western peoples could breed maize and potatoes without Western intervention. Maize is in many ways superior to wheat, it grows more quickly in the climate of much of the Americas and requires little in terms of preparation to plant. The introduction of maize and potatoes to the West was quite rapid but there were suspicions about both. Rye was more successful in the Americas than wheat. Interestingly there was a rye / wheat divide in Europe with Germany, Poland and Russia eating rye bread almost exclusively and France and England eating wheat bread – this division weakened in the period after the French Revolution as white bread became aspirational.

The main focus of the 19th century is on the mechanisation of agriculture, starting off in the United States with mechanized reaping machines in the mid-19th century. It was at this time that roller mills were introduced which allowed white flour to be made more easily, and improved throughput. Bread baking in the US started to be mechanised. Elsewhere Justus von Liebig was working on artificial fertilizers which improved yields – this was on the basis of improved understanding of plant biology. In the American Civil War bread played a role – the North grew wheat, made bread and transported it on the new railway lines – the South grew cotton which you can’t eat nor could it be sold abroad and grain import imported. Furthermore, the North grew and harvested wheat with a reduced workforce, many having gone to fight, which they carried on doing after the war allowing America to dominate the supply of wheat to the global market.

The final section covers the first half of the 20th century including the First World War and the American Dust Bowl – a result of over-exploitation of the land to grow wheat. Interestingly the Americans identified the problem quite promptly, and started to address it with a programme of converting wheat fields to pasture and planting trees. It finishes talking about Hitler’s very direct policies of starvation, allocating starvation levels of food to non-Germans and Jewish people. He also talks about the horticultural revolution which led to the cold hardy wheat grown in Canada and the Soviet Union, and other northern. It is here that we see most clearly that 6000 years was written 80 years ago – Jacob considers Lysenko, the Soviet biologist, something of a hero and the battle over the health benefits of white bread when compared to more wholemeal bread was still on. These days Lysenko is known as an anti-Darwinist, and for his suppression of opponents through his political power. Obviously the book was written before the further Green Revolution of the 1970s which also impacted the growing of wheat.

6000 years is rather long and rambling but I found it pretty readable and the wider focus made me curious about, for example, the mechanisation of agriculture in 19th century. It is anachronistic in places, and I think in some areas our understanding has moved on.