‘I never read a book that I must review; it prejudices you so.’ – Oscar Wilde.

So I did not read all the book – but urge you to acquire it for edification and enjoyment. Denis Murphy is a co-evolutionist, raising serious matters currently affecting humankind, and this book should be accessible to all those interested in humanity and crop plants. The populist thrust is fascinating: the book starts pre-Natufians, proceeds via a lamentation on the destruction of Ur, whizzes around the floating maize gardens of Mayas and Aztecs, praises Imperial botanic gardens and discourses on fluid plant genomes crucial to the co-evolution of humankind and crops. You could pragmatically confine yourself to greyed-in ‘boxes’ of condensed information but then not discover how domestic animals (e.g. cats and minipigs) have co-adapted with humans and miss chelation – and the debunking of the Popeye myth. One is persuaded that barley rather than wheat should be ‘the staff of life’, enlightened about how feeble crop-tenders came to supplant vigorous meat-eating hunter-gathers, and curse the stupidity of well-intentioned crop-growers who brought irrigation and destroyed plant-tenders who formerly existed in barren areas.

Browsing reveals Norm Borlaug in his trademark hat in the same plate as a painting by Pieter Breuger the Elder. One marvels at the wisdom of Ashurbanipal or Tiglath Pileser III and realizes that it was boring farm bureaucarcy that led to writing and the development of empires . . . and then learns how civilizations perished through mis-management of crops and soils, although sometimes the decline came with climatic events such as we may be experiencing now. There are useful notes to its 17 chapters and a superb bibliography of c. 1000 references, though economies have restricted the quality of the rather primitive illustrations, and the maps and charts could be much improved. I regret that this review was not the co-operative effort of my family (an archaeologist daughter, a human evolutionist brother and a sister-in-law who is an authority on Neanderthals), but I hope that this solo effort will encourage you to become a fan of DJM. His works promise to be prolific and to become compulsive reading for biologists with a bent towards plants – rather than Colin Tudge's animals.