The first in-depth study of Japanese fermentation science in the twentieth century.

The Arts of the Microbial World explores the significance of fermentation phenomena, both as life processes and as technologies, in Japanese scientific culture. Victoria Lee’s careful study documents how Japanese scientists and skilled workers sought to use the microbe’s natural processes to create new products, from soy-sauce mold starters to MSG, vitamins to statins. In traditional brewing houses as well as in the food, fine chemical, and pharmaceutical industries across Japan, they showcased their ability to deal with the enormous sensitivity and variety of the microbial world. 

Charting developments in fermentation science from the turn of the twentieth century, when Japan was an industrializing country on the periphery of the world economy, to 1980 when it had emerged as a global technological and economic power, Lee highlights the role of indigenous techniques in modern science as it took shape in Japan. In doing so, she reveals how knowledge of microbes lay at the heart of some of Japan’s most prominent technological breakthroughs in the global economy.

At a moment when twenty-first-century developments in the fields of antibiotic resistance, the microbiome, and green chemistry suggest that the traditional eradication-based approach to the microbial world is unsustainable, twentieth-century Japanese microbiology provides a new, broader vantage for understanding and managing microbial interactions with society.

A tour of an ancient library transports us to Mesopotamia, introducing us to its people, their ideas, and their humanity.
 
The library of Ashurbanipal, Assyria’s last great king, held an astonishing collection at the forefront of knowledge in its day, from ancient traditions in religion and literature to the latest developments in magic and medicine. When the Assyrian empire fell, the library burned to the ground, and its contents, clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform writing, lay buried for thousands of years until a team of Victorian archaeologists discovered the remnants in modern-day Iraq. The clay had baked and hardened; the very fire that consumed the library had helped its texts to survive for millennia.
 
In The Library of Ancient Wisdom, scholar Selena Wisnom, one of only a few hundred experts able to read cuneiform script today, guides us inside this important collection and, through its contents, brings ancient Mesopotamia and its people to life. Introducing us to Ashurbanipal and his family, scribes, astrologers, physicians, and more, Wisnom explores the library’s tablets and the details they divulge about how these ancient people thought about the world. Like us, they had concerns about job security, jealous rivalries, and profound friendships, and questions about the meaning of life. Wisnom ushers us into a world where magic was commonplace, where the gods spoke to you in dreams, and where the secrets of the universe were revealed through puns—taking us to the heart of what it means to be human.
 
Offering a close look at a major historical landmark as well as a readable account of the world’s earliest civilizations, The Library of Ancient Wisdom lays bare the ideas, hopes, fears, and desires that survive on humble clay.

Shows how the widespread use of food dyes influenced understanding of food, science, and technology, as well as trust in science.

We live in a world saturated by chemicals—our food, our clothes, and even our bodies play host to hundreds of synthetic chemicals that did not exist before the nineteenth century. By the 1900s, a wave of bright coal tar dyes had begun to transform the Western world. Originally intended for textiles, the new dyes soon permeated daily life in unexpected ways, and by the time the risks and uncertainties surrounding the synthesized chemicals began to surface, they were being used in everything from clothes and home furnishings to cookware and food.

In A Rainbow Palate, Carolyn Cobbold explores how the widespread use of new chemical substances influenced perceptions and understanding of food, science, and technology, as well as trust in science and scientists. Because the new dyes were among the earliest contested chemical additives in food, the battles over their use offer striking insights and parallels into today’s international struggles surrounding chemical, food, and trade regulation.
 

A scintillating invitation to enrich our culinary pursuits by understanding how our bodies turn a taste into flavor, emotion, and meaning.

Our foodscape has never been more adventurous, but fully experiencing the subtleties of complex cheeses, wines, or cocktails can be challenging. No longer! In Your Tasting Brain, bestselling food writer Randy Mosher assures us that we can all become master tasters by learning more about the brilliant ways our bodies translate smell, taste, and mouthfeel into flavor—without needing to know everything about terroir, varietals, or exotic ingredients.

In Your Tasting Brain, Mosher shares a road map to send us on our tasting journey, one that connects the worlds of science and art. Our bodies are more finely tuned tasting machines than we realize, Mosher explains. Even a simple grasp of how our senses interact with the world can enhance our culinary delight—and Mosher offers us a tantalizing framework, from how our brain processes, categorizes, and rewards (or punishes) encounters with chemicals in food, all the way to how aromas and flavors spur us to language, emotion, and creativity. Overflowing with scientific insight and practical advice, Your Tasting Brain is an appetizing guide for anyone looking to enhance the pleasures they find in food through attention, curiosity, and practice.