This book—part of the Yesterday & Today series from Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective — explores the role of food, disease, science, and technology in the human past and present. With the human population currently soaring past 7 billion, the question of how to feed, manage, and keep healthy this mass of people is more pressing than ever. The chapters here offer invaluable context and knowledge about the human social and political systems, the scientific and technological discoveries, and the agricultural and medical practices that have kept humans alive and thriving in previous centuries. As we confront the challenges of the twenty-first century, we need more than ever the essential insights that past human experience provide for solving today’s most urgent global problems of food, population, disease, medicine, and technology.
