Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World

March 15, 2022
The author of The $64 Tomato returns with an engaging look at the humble fruit. In this rollicking account, Alexander investigates how the tomato moved from being ignored and disdained to being popular all over the world. The Spanish conquistadors encountered it when they were demolishing the Aztec civilization, and they took it to Europe, where the first samples ended up in Italy. Then, notes the author, it was ignored for centuries, in part because it was related to poisonous nightshade. However, since it was grown as a decorative plant, when people began to try it as food, there were plenty of tomatoes to be had. Italy, especially Naples, looms large in the tomato story, and Alexander spends time in the region tracing the historical connections. "In Italy, when tomatoes were first consumed," writes the author, "it was by the wealthy, and as an exotic curiosity, much like adventurous eaters today might try fugu, the potentially deadly puffer fish, while visiting Japan." One of the tomato's primary uses, ketchup, was a classic American invention, although it began as a way to use the scraps left after canning. Alexander cheerily recounts numerous tales of the tomato's development, which includes a cast of colorful inventors, marketers, and a few fraudsters. The tomato is self-pollinating, although it can also be fertilized from another plant, which makes them easy to grow. Selective breeding and hybridization have created an array of new varieties, although finding the right balance of taste, size, and resistance to disease has been tricky. Alexander doesn't dig in to the practice of artificial ripening, but he is impressed by the trend toward large-scale growing in greenhouses, which is probably the future of the tomato. The narrative is insightful and great fun, though the book's title is a bit misleading--unless you consider the 1949 creation of the Big Boy hybrid to be an earthshaking event. Eccentric, informative, and thoroughly enjoyable.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2022
Alexander chronicled his own frustrating and hilarious experiences growing tomatoes in The $64 Tomato; here he plunges into the history of this amazing fruit. Given the tomato's ubiquity in global cuisines, one might assume it's been a part of daily diets the world over since the dawn of history. But like corn, potatoes, and chocolate, tomatoes originated in the New World. The Spanish brought tomatoes to Europe in the early sixteenth century, and tomatoes appeared in Florence in 1548. In the former British colonies, they were considered practically poisonous until New Jersey farmer Robert Gibbon Johnson ate one publicly in 1820 in what later became a highly mythologized account. The rise of the canning industry in the nineteenth century preserved tomatoes on their own, in soup, or in ketchup, an American staple. Italians cultivated tomatoes in the particularly rich volcanic soils near Naples. From there, tomatoes transformed Italian (and world) cuisine with their marriage to both bread (pizza) and pasta. Culinary history buffs will revel in the myriad anecdotes Alexander unearths here.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2022

Alexander ($64 Tomato) has returned to his "roots" to further investigate this ubiquitous fruit/vegetable. In ten chapters, he takes readers from initial specimens deemed poisonous curiosities during the Renaissance to the giant commercial farms in Immokalee, FL to the improbable 100-acre greenhouses growing hydroponic tomatoes year-round in Canada and Michigan. In the process, he also touches on the history of pizza, early canning technology, the development of GMOs, climate change, agricultural labor relations, and much more. Written in a lighthearted style, this engaging book includes historical photos and illustrations, and is packed with fascinating factoids. This is the type of book where readers will find themselves spouting historical tidbits to everyone in their orbit. Two examples: in the 1930's plants were often 15 feet tall and needed to be tended on stepladders, and the only true San Marzano tomatoes are grown on 370 acres in Italy and thus virtually all those consumed in the US are not legit. VERDICT A fun book that both instructs and entertains on every page. Highly recommended.--Susan Hurst

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 16, 2022
Food writer Alexander (The $64 Tomato) presents a thrilling history of one unassuming plant’s “course to influence the cuisine of the entire world, from American ketchup to Indian tikka masala.” While he sees the tomato’s impact as “comparable... to that of all precious metals in the New World,” he notes that it wasn’t always an easy road for the humble fruit. From its arrival in Italy in 1548, it took nearly 300 years to infiltrate Italian cuisine. As Alexander relates, Americans, like their Italian counterparts, were also quick to ignore this “unhealthy, smelly, and strange” item until, as legend has it, Col. Robert Gibbon Johnson ate an entire bucket of them in 1820 to prove they weren’t poisonous. Peppered with fascinating vignettes that whisk readers from Michelangelo’s time as a forger to the explosive popularity of tomato pills—“a tonic guaranteed to cure all ills”—in mid-19th-century America and Domino’s pizza’s domination of college dorms, Alexander’s narrative delivers a story that’s as informative as it is funny and filled with awe (“admittedly,” Alexander writes, “I’m the kind of sucker who gets a chill from standing on historic ground, marveling.... ‘This is where de’ Medici first saw tomatoes!’ ”). Food lovers will savor every bit.