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In the vein of Mark Kurlansky's bestselling Salt and Cod, a gripping chronicle of the myth, mystery, and uncertain fate of the world’s most popular fruit
In this fascinating and surprising exploration of the banana’s history, cultural significance, and endangered future, award-winning journalist Dan Koeppel gives readers plenty of food for thought. Fast-paced and highly entertaining, Banana takes us from jungle to supermarket, from corporate boardrooms to kitchen tables around the world. We begin in the Garden of Eden—examining scholars’ belief that Eve’s “apple” was actually a banana— and travel to early-twentieth-century Central America, where aptly named “banana republics” rose and fell over the crop, while the companies now known as Chiquita and Dole conquered the marketplace. Koeppel then chronicles the banana’s path to the present, ultimately—and most alarmingly—taking us to banana plantations across the globe that are being destroyed by a fast-moving blight, with no cure in sight—and to the high-tech labs where new bananas are literally being built in test tubes, in a race to save the world’s most beloved fruit.
Read Dan Koeppel's posts on the Penguin Blog.
- Sales Rank: #32408 in Books
- Brand: Koeppel, Dan
- Published on: 2008-12-30
- Released on: 2008-12-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .70" w x 5.30" l, .55 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
From Publishers Weekly
The world's most humble fruit has caused inordinate damage to nature and man, and Popular Science journalist Koeppel (To See Every Bird on Earth) embarks on an intelligent, chock-a-block sifting through the havoc. Seedless, sexless bananas evolved from a wild inedible fruit first cultivated in Southeast Asia, and was probably the apple that got Adam and Eve in trouble in the Garden of Eden. From there the fruit traveled to Africa and across the Pacific, arriving on U.S. shores probably with the Europeans in the 15th century. However, the history of the banana turned sinister as American businessmen caught on to the marketability of this popular, highly perishable fruit then grown in Jamaica. Thanks to the building of the railroad through Costa Rica by the turn of the century, the United Fruit company flourished in Central America, its tentacles extending into all facets of government and industry, toppling banana republics and igniting labor wars. Meanwhile, the Gros Michel variety was annihilated by a fungus called Panama disease (Sigatoka), which today threatens the favored Cavendish, as Koeppel sounds the alarm, shuttling to genetics-engineering labs from Honduras to Belgium. His sage, informative study poses the question fairly whether it's time for consumers to reverse a century of strife and exploitation epitomized by the purchase of one banana. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“Required reading.”—New York Post
“Ambitious in scope… both fascinating and disturbing... I’ll never walk through the produce aisle the same way again… [Banana] is at once a political and economic treatise, a scientific explication, and a cultural history.”—The Boston Globe
“Clear, engaging… admirable… part historical narrative and part pop-science adventure.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“[A] brilliant history.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“A fascinating and surprising history of our most ubiquitous fruit.”—Edward Humes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Monkey Girl and Mississippi Mad
“The history of oil has nothing on that of the yellow fruit.”—Salon.com
About the Author
Dan Koeppel, a 2011 James Beard Award winner, is a science and nature writer who has written for National Geographic, Outside, Scientific American, Wired, and other national publications. He has discussed bananas on NPR’s Fresh Air and Science Friday.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
More information on the banana than you can shake a banana-shaped stick at
By David S. Saunders
I read some articles recently about the potential extinction of the banana and I went to get a better understanding of what is really going on. After reading this book, I know more about the banana, it's many varieties, and the blight of Panama disease that affects this food around the globe. I now know that a banana is technically an herb and that the ubiquitous Cavendish banana outsells every variety of apple and orange combined. Banana cultivation and trade has also had a significant impact on world history. I learned about all of that and more in this well-written, easy read of a book. Mission accomplished.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Yes We Have No Bananas Today
By john purcell
Dan Koeppel has written an informative fast-paced book detailing the rise and fall of the global banana industry, bringing us along over decades of conflict over land ownership, labor's share of profits, rights of owners of capital, property rights, and self-governance. We start at the very beginning since some believe that the Garden of Eden was the place to grow bananas and not apples. Bananas were transformed in the 19th century from a local fruit to a global market by some adventurous, ruthless, and clever entrepreneurs who overcame issues of distance and spoiling to put cheap bananas in every grocery store in the US. Today the descendants of these pioneering plantation managers, railroad tycoons, and shipping magnates run Dole and Chiquita and still supply us with bananas.
Any venture this large and profitable will undoubtedly lead to arguments over the division of profits. Central American politicians and farm workers were not in agreement with the share taken by Chiquita. The international banana companies (Chiquita had eliminated most of its competition through punitive trade wars and acquisition) felt their property rights, capital, and technology were at risk. In Honduras, Guatemala, and Ecuador this became a real fight in most cases as politicians brought in the military and covert forces to figure it all out.
The other interesting sections here deal with the inherent difficulties in growing and breeding bananas as they are seedless (we would not care to eat them as much otherwise) and sexless (they dont reproduce as much as grow into an adjacent plant). The first bananas to be globally commercialized were the Gros Michael, which ultimately was replaced by today's Cavendish. The Gros Michael disappeared due to Panama disease and other ailments despite the industry's efforts which included endless replanting, field flooding, and application of enough chemicals to turn workers blue.
For many years various researchers have worked on the next generation banana, as the Cavendish itself is subject to the same diseases that ultimately did in the Gros Michael. The Cavendish was selected as it was less suspectible but Keoppel claims its days are numbered as well. Only in certain especially forelorn sections of impoverished Africa (such as Uganda where the economy is banana based) are genetically modified bananas grown. Those of us in the west may ultimately need to eat GM bananas or no bananas.
This is a good informative book for both the general audience and the trade. Koeppel is an experienced writer who knows how to break down concepts like how bananas propogate and how diseases spread. He is especially talented at tying in the historical and political content. His evidence to support the impending demise of the Cavendish hypothesis is a bit weak. His bias against big powerful industry shows at times but that is probabaly healthy.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Light read, dark topic
By Ivica Vastic
This is a journalistic account of the political horrors hidden behind the popularity of this bland fruit. For Americans who don't think twice about the difference between picking up an apple or a banana at the grocery store, this book will be thought-provoking.
A lot of the material in it is controversial, however, which makes sharing sources all the more important -- and the book lacks any real documentation or information about the evidence the author uses.
For those interested in the environmental elements of this story (including the banana blight that threatens to bring the long reign of the Cavendish to an end), this book will not be satisfying.
There are more serious, more scholarly books out there (about the United Fruit Company, for example), but for those who are ready to trust the author and want a very easy, casual read, this will fit the bill.
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