Luke O'neill

Written for food aficionados everywhere, this book provides an entertaining look at the history and development of the key foods we eat every day. Mike Gibney, Professor Emeritus of Food and Health at University College Dublin, traces the story of food from early hunter gatherers through settled agriculture to the migration across Europe, and examines the influence early trading, imperial conquests and medieval exploration had on the food chain. Along the way Food through the Ages uncovers some fascinating nuggets: - Indian rice is fluffy to eat with the hand, while Chinese rice is sticky to eat with chopsticks. - In the Middle Ages it became fashionable to stuff small, boned birds into bigger birds into even bigger birds and so on. This process, known as engastration, is still popular today in Cajun cuisine with Turducken, a hen in a duck in a turkey. - A passion for tea led two great powers, China and England, to engage in warfare. - The popularity of the potato accounted for about 25% of the population growth in Europe from 1700 to 1900. - The Arabs brought pasta to Italy, but the popular shaped pastas were most often produced in religious orders by nuns. - The Jesuits and Dominicans argued bitterly over the perceived magical yet sinful attributes of Aztec chocolate. Professor Gibney explains the origins of commonplace foods, including bread, meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, pasta, rice, sugar, tea, chocolate and of course Ireland’s beloved potato. He defines a well-stocked larder and shows how the kitchen has changed over thousands of years, getting cleaner, less smelly, more reliable, less dangerous and more accessible to all.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK *Chosen as a Book of the Year by the Financial Times, Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Prospect, Guardian and The Times* This is the story of a race - not against other vaccines or other scientists, but against a deadly and devastating virus. On 1 January 2020, Sarah Gilbert, Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University, read an article about four people in China with a strange pneumonia. Within two weeks, she and her team had designed a vaccine against a pathogen that no one had ever seen before. Less than 12 months later, vaccination was rolled out across the world to save millions of lives from Covid-19. In Vaxxers, we hear directly from Professor Gilbert and her colleague Dr Catherine Green as they reveal the inside story of making the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and the cutting-edge science and sheer hard work behind it. This is their story of fighting a pandemic as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Sarah and Cath share the heart-stopping moments in the eye of the storm; they separate fact from fiction; they explain how they made a highly effective vaccine in record time with the eyes of the world watching; and they give us hope for the future. Vaxxers invites us into the lab to find out how science will save us from this pandemic, and how we can prepare for the inevitable next one.