Throughout history, food has done more than simply provide sustenance. It has acted as a tool of social transformation, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is an account of these other, indirect uses of food which have helped to shape and transform societies around the world, from prehistory to the present. Food helped to found, structure and connect together civilizations across the world. Food helped to build empires and bring about a surge in economic development through industrialization. Food has been employed as a military and ideological weapon. And today, in the culmination of a process which has been going on for thousands of years, the foods we choose in the supermarket connect us to global debates about trade, development and the adoption of new technologies. Served up in order, and drawing from fields including genetics, archaeology, anthropology, ethno-botany and economics, the story of these gastronomic revolutions is a fully satisfying account of the whole of human history.