The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food - Hardcover

Lizzie Collingham

4.08

460 ratings by Goodreads

9780713999648: The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713999640 ISBN 13: 9780713999648

Publisher: Allen Lane/Penquin, 2011

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In World War Two, 19 million people died in the conflicts across the globe. Yet in those same years, more than 20 million died from starvation and malnutrition. In The Taste of War Lizzie Collingham shows how food - and its lack - was central to the war's causes and continuation. She explores how starvation was often a deliberate governmental policy, and reveals how the necessity of feeding whole countries lead to Pearl Harbour, Germany's invasion of Russia, and the Holocaust itself.

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About the Author:

Lizzie Collingham is the author of Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj and Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, hailed by William Dalrymple as 'scholarly, accessible and above all utterly original'. Having taught History at Warwick University she became a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge. She is now an independent scholar and writer. She has lived in Australia, France and Germany and now lives near Cambridge with her husband and daughter.

Review:

Remarkable, powerful * The Times * Amazing... she makes it impossible to think of the war in the old terms * Daily Mail * Fascinating, shocking ... For anyone who thought that the subject of food in the Second World War could be dispatched with a few cliches about digging for victory * Mail on Sunday * Ambitious, compelling, fascinating... uncomfortable reading if you began by believing in the possibility of a just war * Guardian * This fascinating calorie-centric history of the greatest conflict in world history is wholly convincing -- Andrew Roberts A powerful and important book... One of the beauties of this book is its savage unpicking of cherished myths * Independent * Lizzie Collingham's book possesses the notable virtue of originality...[She] has gathered many strands to pursue an important theme across a global canvas. She reminds us of the timeless truth that all human and political behaviour is relative -- Max Hastings The great merits of [this] book...lie in its extraordinary range...and in the entirely new perspective it throws on the Second World War -- Bernard Potter * London Review of Books *

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