Rigorously researched, Hunger: A Modern History draws together social, cultural, and political history, to show us how we came to have a moral, political, and social responsibility toward the hungry. Vernon forcefully reminds us how many perished from hunger in the empire and reveals how their history was intricately connected with the precarious achievements of the welfare state in Britain, as well as with the development of international institutions committed to the conquest of world hunger.
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Hunger: A Modern History
Rigorously researched, Hunger: A Modern History draws together social, cultural, and political history, to show us how we came to have a moral, political, and social responsibility toward the hungry. Vernon forcefully reminds us how many perished from hunger in the empire and reveals how their history was intricately connected with the precarious achievements of the welfare state in Britain, as well as with the development of international institutions committed to the conquest of world hunger.
Rigorously researched, Hunger: A Modern History draws together social, cultural, and political history, to show us how we came to have a moral, political, and social responsibility toward the hungry. Vernon forcefully reminds us how many perished from hunger in the empire and reveals how their history was intricately connected with the precarious achievements of the welfare state in Britain, as well as with the development of international institutions committed to the conquest of world hunger.
James Vernon is Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley.
Table of Contents
Contents Preface 1. Hunger and the Making of the Modern World 2. The Humanitarian Discovery of Hunger 3. Hunger as Political Critique 4. The Science and Calculation of Hunger 5. Hungry England and Planning for a World of Plenty 6. Collective Feeding and the Welfare of Society 7. You Are What You Eat: Educating the Citizen as Consumer 8. Remembering Hunger: The Script of British Social Democracy 9. Conclusion Notes Index
What People are Saying About This
Gareth Stedman Jones
Hunger: A Modern History moves impressively between the British domestic and political, the colonial and the global, without straining the argument or losing touch with the sources. James Vernon's research ranges over vast tracts of material, demonstrating concretely and graphically how discussion about famine originating in nineteenth-century India became central to discussion about nutrition in twentieth-century Britain. — Gareth Stedman Jones, Cambridge University
Bruce Robbins
This is history writing of the most jolting and publicly significant kind. — Bruce Robbins, Columbia University
Geoff Eley
A work of exciting originality that uses hunger to challenge our essential ideas about the history of the welfare state and of democracy and citizenship in twentieth-century Britain. This is a very major book. — Geoff Eley, University of Michigan
Philippa Levine
A lively and engaging study that demonstrates how hunger is as much a historical condition as it is a biological one. Elegant, intelligent, and ambitious, it will be widely read and admired. — Philippa Levine, University of Southern California
