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Cargando... Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilizationpor Andrew Lawler
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Well written, entertaining, reasonably accurate from what I can tell. ( ) Consider the chicken. No really. Lawler's fascinating book takes us through the history of the world through the feathery lens of one of humanities most important fellow creatures. From cock fights to breakfast tables to traditions of Southern cooking and a symbol of human virility, this bird has been with us through it all. The chicken has at once mystical and practical uses across the modern world and yet for all it has given us, Lawler reminds us of the sad fate of too many of the birds, bred in terrible factory farm conditions to bizarre proportions causing them maladies and deformities in the search for the perfect chicken breast to put on our dinner plates. It's this ability to fascinate and move us about something we may have given little thought to that makes Lawler's writing so enjoyable and this book a must read for every reader who is simply curious about the world around them. Quite enjoyable story about the world's most populous (and popular) bird. Everything you wanted to know about chickens but didn't want to ask, including how the chicken originated from a fierce jungle fowl in South-East Asia, how it spread to the Middle East & the West before the time of Christ (there were chickens already in Britain when the Romans arrived), how centuries of tampering with breeds have produced today's meat & egg producing machines, and how some people are fighting to restore the industrialised bird to its more natural form. Along the way there are excursions to Filipino cockfights, mass chicken sacrifices by Hasidic Jews in New York, vast chicken meat producing factories in the South and Vietnamese villages where all black chickens (that's feather, blood & bones) are highly prized. The author tends to jump back & forth between time periods which is somewhat jarring, but overall this is an entertaining mix of popular science and social history. Well worth reading. I saw this in the library and thought, 'a book about chickens?' So, of course, I had to pick it up. It's not that I'm overly interested in chickens, it's just that I couldn't believe anyone would write one for...well, people who weren't. I figured it was a joke. Nope, it's about chickens, and it's not as dull as you might assume. In fact, if you're a chicken fancier, this book is probably a must. It's well-written, has enough science and history to interest general readers, and discloses several facts I know I wasn't familiar with before. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
"From ancient empires to modern economics, veteran journalist Andrew Lawler delivers a sweeping history of the animal that has been most crucial to the spread of civilization across the globe--the chicken. Queen Victoria was obsessed with it. Socrates' last words were about it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using it. Catholic popes, African shamans, Chinese philosophers, and Muslim mystics praised it. Throughout the history of civilization, humans have embraced it in every form imaginable--as a messenger of the gods, powerful sex symbol, gambling aid, emblem of resurrection, all-purpose medicine, handy research tool, inspiration for bravery, epitome of evil, and, of course, as the star of the world's most famous joke. In Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?, science writer Andrew Lawler takes us on an adventure from prehistory to the modern era with a fascinating account of the partnership between human and chicken (the most successful of all cross-species relationships). Beginning with the recent discovery in Montana that the chicken's unlikely ancestor is T. rex, this book builds on Lawler's popular Smithsonian cover article, How the Chicken Conquered the World to track the chicken from its original domestication in the jungles of Southeast Asia some 10,000 years ago to postwar America, where it became the most engineered of animals, to the uncertain future of what is now humanity's single most important source of protein. In a masterful combination of historical sleuthing and journalistic exploration on four continents, Lawler reframes the way we feel and think about our most important animal partner--and, by extension, all domesticated animals, and even nature itself. Lawler's narrative reveals the secrets behind the chicken's transformation from a shy jungle bird into an animal of astonishing versatility, capable of serving our species' changing needs. For no other siren has called humans to rise, shine, and prosper quite like the rooster's cry: Cock-a-doodle-doo!"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)636.5009Technology Agriculture & related technologies Animal husbandry PoultryClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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