Friday, July 10, 2009

What is Tom Standage reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Tom Standage, author of An Edible History of Humanity and other books.

One part of his entry:
On the non-fiction side, I'm reading Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler. It's a megahistory that looks at world history through the prism of language, and it's fascinating, particularly in the way it draws analogies across space and time. I enjoy megahistories a great deal, which is why I have written two myself (looking at world history from the perspectives of drink and food).[read on]
Tom Standage is the business affairs editor at the Economist and the author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses, The Victorian Internet, The Turk, and The Neptune File. He has written for Wired, the New York Times, and numerous magazines and newspapers.

Among the early praise for An Edible History of Humanity:
“A fascinating history of the role of food in causing, enabling and influencing successive transformations of human society. This is an extraordinary and well-told story, a much neglected dimension of history.”
Financial Times

“It’s history you can sink your teeth into.”
Los Angeles Times

“[Standage] writes with an eye to comprehension and a sure touch with anecdote and illustration… his account of the shift from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture [is] a masterpiece of summary and explanation.”
The Guardian
Read an excerpt from An Edible History of Humanity.

Writers Read: Tom Standage.

--Marshal Zeringue