Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World: A History

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. (June)