Against the grain : how agriculture has hijacked civilization / Richard Manning.

Originally published in 2004.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-219) and index.

Arousal -- Why agriculture? -- Why agriculture spread -- Hard times -- Modern times -- A vanguard of feudalism -- To see the wizard -- Why we are what we eat -- Hog heaven -- A counteragriculture -- I eat, therefore I kill.

Richard Manning offers a dramatically revisionist view of recent human evolution, beginning with the vast increase in brain size that set us apart from our primate relatives and brought an accompanying increase in our need for nourishment. He suggests that agriculture as we have practiced it runs against both our grain and nature's. Drawing on the work of anthropologists, biologists, archaeologists, and philosophers, along with his own travels, he argues that not only our ecological ills-overpopulation, erosion, pollution-but our social and emotional malaise are rooted in the devil's bargain we made in our not-so-distant past. And he offers personal, achievable ways we might re-contour the path we have taken to resurrect what is most sustainable and sustaining in our own nature and the planet's.