I’ve been thinking about potatoes a lot.
Perhaps too much, if such a thing were possible.
When setting out to write a book about the global domination of potatoes, one could be forgiven for assuming it a work of fiction. But it wasn’t fiction that secured Antoine-Augustin Parmentier’s place in history, it was potatoes. It wasn’t fiction that decided the War of Bavarian Succession, it was potatoes. Nor was it fiction that inspired the invention of television, devastated the Irish, or torpedoed Dan Quayle’s presidential ambitions – it was all potatoes.
Through agriculture, cuisine and popular media, humans have bent potatoes to our will since the dawn of time. Or is it the other way around? Is it possible that, through it all, we are but pawns to the potato’s dark designs?
