Beans

Winner of The 2008 Jane Grigson Award, issued by the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP)

Winner of the 2008 Cordon d' Or Culinary Literature - History Culinary Academy Award

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. Beans: A History takes the reader on a fascinating journey across cuisines and cultures.

"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

"[A] vividly entertaining history of the humble bean." --Raymond Blanc, Saveur

"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." --Betty Fussell, author of The Story of Corn and I Hear America Cooking: The Cooks and Recipes of American Regional Cuisine

"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." --Andrew F. Smith, editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

"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, the Editor in Chief, Gastronomica

"By successfully integrating history, geography, botany, and politics into understanding beans, Albala demonstrates the wonder of liberal education itself." - The AAG Review of Books