Amber Waves: The Extraordinary Biography of Wheat, from Wild Grass to World Megacrop

University of Chicago Press, 2020-09-01. Hardcover. Acceptable/Very Good. University of Chicago Press [Published Date: 2020]. Hardcover, 246 pp. First printing, (with full number line). Acceptable+ in very good dust jacket. Orange and brown paper over Boards with gold lettering on spine. Light bumping and scuffing to edges of covers. Binding tight. Several pages have underlining in blue ink but there are no margin notes or other writing. Dust jacket has a 1/2" tear to paper over the top edge of the back cover and a few other small nicks and light creasing along edges. Light overall scuffing to jacket as well. Now in an archival-quality (removable) Brodart Cover. NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. A good reading copy. [From front jacket flap] At breakfast tables and bakeries, we take for granted a grain that has made human civilization possible, a cereal whose humble origins belie its world-shaping power: wheat. Amber Waves tells the story of a group of grass species that first grew in scattered stands in the foothills of the Middle East until our ancestors discovered their value as a source of food. Over thousands of years, we moved their seeds to all but the polar regions of Earth, slowly cultivating what we now know as wheat, and in the process creating a world of cuisines that uses wheat seeds as a staple food. Wheat spread across the globe, but as ecologist Catherine Zabinski shows us, a biography of wheat is not only the story of how plants ensure their own success: from the earliest bread to the most mouthwatering pasta, it is also a story of human ingenuity in producing enough food for ourselves and our communities. . .