Milk: A 10,000-Year History

Mark Kurlansky’s first global food history since the bestselling Cod and Salt; the fascinating cultural, economic and culinary story of milk and all things dairy - with recipes throughout

While mother’s milk may be the essence of nourishment, it is the milk of other mammals that humans have cultivated ever since the domestication of animals more than 10,000 years ago. Today, milk is a test case in the most pressing issues in food politics, from industrial farming and animal rights to GMOs, the locavore movement and advocates for raw milk, who controversially reject pasteurisation.

Profoundly intertwined with human civilisation, milk has a compelling and surprisingly global story to tell, and historian Mark Kurlansky is the perfect person to tell it. Tracing the liquid’s diverse history from antiquity to the present, he details its curious and crucial role in cultural evolution, religion, nutrition, politics, and economics.