Tobacco was not alone. Mann writes at length of the introduction of the potato, a native of the Andean foothills, to the Old World. Most histories of food tell this story, but few with the grim recognition that the arrival of the potato marked the onset of the age of monoculture — for, as Mann notes, “All of Europe’s potatoes descended from a few tubers sent across the ocean by curious Spaniards.” The potato that Europe knew thus represented only a tiny sliver of the food’s genetic diversity, and if it fed millions and “was as important to the modern era as, say, the invention of the steam engine,” it also impoverished the European larder as small vegetable gardens gave way to vast one-crop fields.
Mann’s book is jammed with facts and factoids, trivia and moments of great insight that take on power as they accumulate. We all know that mosquitoes are a nuisance and that malaria, brought with them across oceans during the Columbian Exchange, poses a grave danger. Mann adds the unknown story of their surprisingly important role in both the American Revolution and the Civil War. Malaria, that parasitic disease, was rare in England and in the North and easily felled outsiders, while most of the Southerners who fought at places such as Yorktown and Chancellorsville were used to it, if not altogether immune. “Revolutionary mosquitoes,” by Mann’s account, helped win American independence and to extend the Civil War nearly two years beyond Gettysburg.
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