Andy Warner’s Oddball Histories: Spices and Spuds: How Plants Made Our World

From New York Times bestselling author Andy Warner comes a highly entertaining, informative graphic novel that traces our ever-evolving relationship with plants through time.

Did you know that plants helped shape our modern world?

It may sound ridiculous, but empires have risen and fallen because of stuff you’d find in your grocery store’s vegetable aisle. Through wars, famine, prosperity, and more, every aspect of our lives and livelihoods has something to do with plants!

Whether or not you notice them, plants are as central to our day-to-day lives as a bowl of rice or a plate of pasta, and they have shaped our history the same way a gardener trims a topiary.

Did you know that a pepper blockade led to the Age of Exploration? How about that huge wheat barges once kept Rome running with free bread? Or that whole wars were fought over tea? Get ready to follow corn’s weird journey from the floating fields of the Aztec emperors to the glossy shine on this book’s cover.

Andy Warner sifts through the roots and leaves of our long, complicated history with the earth’s original green resources in this hilarious, fact-filled follow-up to Andy Warner’s Oddball Histories: Pests and Pets.

Andy Warner is the New York Times bestselling author of Brief Histories of Everyday Objects and This Land is My Land. He was a contributing editor at the Nib and teaches cartooning at Stanford University, California College of the Arts, and the Animation Workshop in Denmark. His comics have been published by Slate, Fusion, American Public Media, popsci.com, KQED, IDEO, The Center for Constitutional Rights, UNHCR, UNRWA, UNICEF, and Buzzfeed. He was a recipient of the 2018 Berkeley Civic Arts Grant and was the 2019, 2021, and 2023 Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park Artist-in-Residence. He works in a garret room in South Berkeley and comes from the sea.