Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization

Front Cover
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Feb 1, 2005 - Nature - 240 pages

In this provocative, wide-ranging book, Against the Grain, Richard Manning offers a dramatically revisionist view of recent human evolution, beginning with the vast increase in brain size that set us apart from our primate relatives and brought an accompanying increase in our need for nourishment. For 290,000 years, we managed to meet that need as hunter-gatherers, a state in which Manning believes we were at our most human: at our smartest, strongest, most sensually alive. But our reliance on food made a secure supply deeply attractive, and eventually we embarked upon the agricultural experiment that has been the history of our past 10,000 years.

The evolutionary road is littered with failed experiments, however, and Manning suggests that agriculture as we have practiced it runs against both our grain and nature's. Drawing on the work of anthropologists, biologists, archaeologists, and philosophers, along with his own travels, he argues that not only our ecological ills-overpopulation, erosion, pollution-but our social and emotional malaise are rooted in the devil's bargain we made in our not-so-distant past. And he offers personal, achievable ways we might re-contour the path we have taken to resurrect what is most sustainable and sustaining in our own nature and the planet's.

From inside the book

 

Selected pages

Contents

WHY AGRICULTURE?
HARD TIMES
MODERN TIMES
A VANGUARD OF FEUDALISM
TO SEE THE WIZARD
WHY WE ARE WHAT WE
HOG HEAVEN
A COUNTERAGRICULTURE
EAT THEREFORE I KILL
NOTES
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization
Richard Manning
Limited preview - 2004
Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization
Richard Manning
No preview available - 2005

Common terms and phrases

American Andreas animals Archer Daniels Archer Daniels Midland Asia Aztec became began Betty Fussell bison brain bread called catastrophic cattle century Chez Panisse China civilization colonization commodities corn syrup Cro-Magnon crop cuisine culture Dead Zone developing world diet disease domestication dwarf Dwayne Andreas ethanol Europe European evolution evolved famine farmers farming fast-food federal feed fertilizer fish global grain grasslands Green Revolution grow horses human hunter-gatherers hunters hunting hybrid industrial agriculture irrigation land livestock living maize markets meat Mexico Middle East million modern Montana nation’s native natural neo-Europes nitrogen nixtamalization North nutrition organic percent plains plants political poor population potatoes poverty problem processed food production protein region rice River role salmon says seed head sense shrimp shrimp farm simply Slow Food smallpox social societies sort soybeans species spread subsidies sugar surplus survive trade United varieties wheat wild Yaqui Valley

About the author (2005)

Richard Manning is the author of Last Stand, A Good House, Grassland, One Round River, and Food's Frontier. He lives in Montana.

Bibliographic information

TitleAgainst the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization
AuthorRichard Manning
PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005
ISBN1466823429, 9781466823426
Length240 pages
Subjects ›  ›  › 

History / General
Nature / Ecology
Science / History
Science / Life Sciences / Evolution
Science / Life Sciences / Zoology / Mammals
  
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