An Edible History of Humanity
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An Edible History of Humanity
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Narrated by:
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George K. Wilson
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By:
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Tom Standage
About this listen
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-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 10,391
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 10,347
Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Compelling pre-history and emergent history
- By Doug on 08-25-11
By: Jared Diamond
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Collapse
- How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,708
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,473
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,465
In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Jared Diamond Downs You in Explanation
- By Rob on 07-20-18
By: Jared Diamond
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The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,460
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,000
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,005
Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Personal
- By Robert F. Jones on 09-15-17
By: Matt Ridley
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Ramp Hollow
- The Ordeal of Appalachia
- By: Steven Stoll
- Narrated by: Brian Sutherland
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4 out of 5 stars 79
Appalachia - among the most storied and yet least understood regions in America - has long been associated with poverty and backwardness. But how did this image arise, and what exactly does it mean? In Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll launches an original investigation into the history of Appalachia and its place in US history, with a special emphasis on how generations of its inhabitants lived, worked, survived, and depended on natural resources held in common.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Almost unlistenable
- By Golf Fan on 09-13-18
By: Steven Stoll
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Banana
- The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
- By: Dan Koeppel
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 137
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 117
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 115
Banana combines a pop-science journey around the globe, a fascinating tale of an iconic American business enterprise, and a look into the alternately tragic and hilarious banana subculture (one does exist) - ultimately taking us 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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very Good Book - History, Science, and Economics
- By Jose on 11-08-17
By: Dan Koeppel
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A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things
- A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet
- By: Raj Patel, Jason W. Moore
- Narrated by: Simon Mattacks
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 89
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 75
Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. Bringing the latest ecological research together with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other rebellions and uprisings, Patel and Moore demonstrate that throughout history, crises have always prompted fresh strategies to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A remarkable exposé & synthesis of the Ponzi scheme that capitalism is and always has been.
- By Scott on 02-10-18
By: Raj Patel, and others
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Indian Givers
- How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World
- By: Jack Weatherford
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 438
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 350
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 352
After 500 years, the world's huge debt to the wisdom of the Indians of the Americas has finally been explored in all its vivid drama by anthropologist Jack Weatherford. He traces the crucial contributions made by the Indians to our federal system of government, our democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture, and ecology, and in this astonishing, ground-breaking book takes a giant step toward recovering a true American history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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All things Jack Weatherford
- By Robert on 06-03-10
By: Jack Weatherford
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The Vertical Farm
- Feeding the World in the 21st Century
- By: Dickson Despommier
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4 out of 5 stars 72
When Columbia professor Dickson Despommier set out to solve America's food, water, and energy crises, he didn't just think big - he thought up. The vertical farm has excited scientists, architects, and politicians around the globe. These farms, grown inside skyscrapers, would provide solutions to many of the serious problems we currently face.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Brainstorming - Not reality
- By Texas Community Project on 01-25-11
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Changes in the Land
- Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
- By: William Cronon
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 95
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 93
In this landmark work of environmental history, William Cronon offers an original and profound explanation of the effects European colonists' sense of property and their pursuit of capitalism had upon the ecosystems of New England. Reissued here with an updated afterword by the author and a new preface by the distinguished colonialist John Demos, Changes in the Land provides a brilliant interdisciplinary interpretation of how land and people influence one another.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent histgory and ecology
- By Eugene Gallagher on 09-26-20
By: William Cronon
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Why the West Rules - for Now
- The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
- By: Ian Morris
- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 24 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 283
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 221
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 222
Sometime around 1750, English entrepreneurs unleashed the astounding energies of steam and coal, and the world was forever changed. The emergence of factories, railroads, and gunboats propelled the West’s rise to power in the nineteenth century, and the development of computers and nuclear weapons in the 20th century secured its global supremacy.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Compelling and infuriating take at World History
- By Skeptical on 09-11-11
By: Ian Morris
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Lesser Beasts
- A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig
- By: Mark Essig
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 711
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 644
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 639
As historian Mark Essig reveals in Lesser Beasts, swine have such a bad reputation for precisely the same reasons they are so valuable as a source of food: they are intelligent, self-sufficient, and omnivorous. What's more, he argues, we ignore our historic partnership with these astonishing animals at our peril.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Virtuous Carnivors?
- By David on 04-14-16
By: Mark Essig
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Animal, Vegetable, Junk
- A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal
- By: Mark Bittman
- Narrated by: Mark Bittman
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 230
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 196
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 194
The story of humankind is usually told as one of technological innovation and economic influence—of arrowheads and atomic bombs, settlers and stock markets. But behind it all, there is an even more fundamental driver: Food. In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, trusted food authority Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of how the frenzy for food has driven human history to some of its most catastrophic moments.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Mostly Junk
- By Daniel Ducat on 05-22-21
By: Mark Bittman
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Open Veins of Latin America
- Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
- By: Eduardo Galeano, Isabel Allende - Foreward
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,285
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,004
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 994
Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx. Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Please up-date the addition
- By fishrock on 02-20-10
By: Eduardo Galeano, and others
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Born in Blackness
- Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War
- By: Howard W. French
- Narrated by: James Fouhey
- Length: 16 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 198
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Story5 out of 5 stars 173
Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe's dehumanizing engagement with the "dark" continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe's yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies in the heart of West Africa.
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5 out of 5 stars
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American History World History Our History
- By Bill on 06-13-22
By: Howard W. French
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