This book was an absolute delight! Equal parts storytelling, history and adventure. What I loved most were the anecdotes about well known fruits - like avocado, mango, dates, and citrus fruits. I had no prior knowledge of David Fairchild, and greatly enjoyed learning about his place in American history as the pioneer who brought many popular plants to this country. Thanks Daniel Stone for packaging your impressive research into a book that was so fascinating and charming! I will never look at food the same again!

I picked up the hard copy and concurrently listened to a good portion on Audible. The narration was fantastic, but I also wanted to see all of the great photos of Fairchild's travels.

When working with different cultures, the conversation often includes discussions about their foods. It is always fascinating because we have a wide variety of food in the world today, but many don’t know the point of origin for many of them. This book takes the reader behind the scenes. This book provides much of that information as it discusses the journeys of David Fairchild. Interesting read.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. Thanks to NetGalley and Dutton Publishing for making it available.

This book was a very interesting tale of food in America. I enjoyed learning more about food history and learned a lot about how different foods came to the United States.

A great true story of a food explorer, David Fairchild who introduced foods into the American society.

Food Explorer by Daniel Stone @DanEnRoute is out this month. Amazing biography about botanist David Fairchild who brought the world's food to America. Great read!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's U.S. history disguised as an adventure story. I've always had a soft for intrepid tales of exploration (not to mention plants). Before this, I knew little to nothing about David Fairchild and the plant-hunters who revolutionized the agricultural world around the turn of the 20th century. I'm recommending this book to almost everyone I know.

<i>Thank you NetGalley and Dutton Books for the copy. All views are my own. </i>

A wonderful story about the life of David Fairchild a botanist, who traveled the world bring back many new crops and plants for North Americans to enjoy.
This story along with all of the fascinating people Fairchild knew, and worked with was exceptionally fun to read. So much information, not only about plants but of the people as well, who against many odds brought these plants to North America. How to ship, pack and eventually grow and get people to like what they grew was a constant challenge, and just the effort to keep their findings alive for the long journeys back home was fascinating.
Today I must say we take what we eat and how simple it is to pick it up at the store for granted. Once you know the challenges the early botanist went through so that we can have this luxury, is quite eye opening.
There are so many facts to read about, some of the people were quite eccentric, such as the Dutch agricultural explorer, Frank Meyer (The Meyer Lemon) who was sent by the US Dept of agriculture to Asia many times to search out new plants. He loved plants but he also loved just wandering and was quite often in the midst of real danger.
Fairfields long time mentor, Barbour Lathrop an American philanthropist and world traveler, Would cover Fairchilds expenses if he would travel with him around the world. This would benefit both of them, the company and the chance to look for plants as Fairchild himself did not have the money, and who at an early age didn't feel he could sit behind a desk for work. Later on he would marry Marian, daughter of Alexander Graham Bell.
This book has a lot of photos I understand, but which I did not see as I received an advanced copy of the book from NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton, Thank you.

Wow. I am not normally a voracious page-turner of non-fiction, but this one did it for me.

This is the true story of David Fairchild, a man who was responsible for immeasurably enriching America's agriculture. It's an exciting and eye-opening read.
None of us can escape that we are probably pretty complacent about the foods we have grown up with, the foods we assume "belong" to our people and our lifestyle. These foods somehow seem to just naturally have pride of place on our menu, and everything else, while interesting and maybe delicious, is slightly exotic and "outside." In this book that view is exposed as fascinatingly wrong.

When I learned from this book how much painstaking work and passion went into importing new plants into America--plants that produce food we now take for granted--I was in awe. When I realized what an absolute lottery of chance it was that certain plants found success in the United States and other plants never quite got a proper opportunity due to accident or poor timing, I was confounded. My exciting, profound takeaway from this book is that there is SO MUCH food out there and given a slight alteration in history or policy, ALL of it could have been MY "normal". If this doesn't change the way you look at food, and enhance your willingness to try all types, then nothing will.

This book was extremely well written. Usually when I read non-fiction, I set myself goals of a certain number of pages per time. When I was about 70% through, I intended to stop for a bit, but I couldn't. I wanted to know what happened to David Fairchild, to his star explorer Frank Meyer, and to the edge-of-your-seat battle between the plant importers and the pest preventers.

This is a tale of a little espionage, a little diplomacy, a little bureaucracy, a little romance, a lot of friendship, and a driving curiosity about the good stuff on the planet.

Meals must have been pretty dull in the nineteenth century. My high-school history class made a big deal of the scenes where Native Americans introduced European settlers to maize, but no one told us how many foods we take for granted today were not found in North America until someone began importing them for farmers to grow locally. Without major efforts to introduce them to American farms we would not have items like asparagus, bananas, or even apples and onions.
The Food Explorer tells the adventures of David Fairchild, who traveled the globe numerous times beginning in 1894 searching for new or improved plants to benefit American farmers and consumers. And they WERE adventures. Beyond the obvious perils of world travel at that period, including disease (Fairchild’s companion Lathrop caught yellow fever on one of their trips.), not all countries were eager to lose a possible competitive advantage by having their local crops grown by American farmers. Sometimes Fairchild was essentially engaged in espionage and had to smuggle his finds back to the United States.
Fairchild’s quest to broaden the scope of American agriculture was a personal one, but, not being a wealthy man, he needed sponsorship. During many of his trips he was sponsored by or was an employee of the US Department of Agriculture, but as political winds shifted, so did their interest, and Fairchild’s funding waxed and waned. In one episode the Secretary of Agriculture sent him to Corsica and then after he arrived refused to send him the money to do the job! Fortunately Fairchild had a benefactor in the person of Barbour Lathrop, a highly idiosyncratic character with a love of travel and a need for companionship and whose deep pockets helped compensate for his testy personality.
In addition to Fairchild’s story, there is a lot of interesting lore in the book, such as how to solve the challenge of getting collected specimens back to Washington safely, e.g., by sticking cuttings into the starchy centers of potatoes. I also learned that, although the tomato is a biologically a fruit, the Supreme Court in 1893 declared them to be a vegetable in order to collect higher tariffs on them. And if you enjoy eating French fries, thank Thomas Jefferson, who first served them in the White House in 1799.
Although Fairchild is definitely the hero of the book, there is plenty of background to provide the context in which he was able to do his work. New big companies in the late nineteenth century such as Kellogg’s introduced exciting products like chocolate milk and whetted the American appetite for other new foods, and events like the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 introduced more than just the Ferris wheel. The importance of agriculture to the economy made agricultural policies even more of a political football than it is today, and congressman would distribute largesse in the form of seeds.
David Fairchild was not the only zealous food explorer who opened America to the broader world of food, but his story is an inspiring example of what one man can do with determination, grit, and some serendipity. It is a fascinating read.
NOTE: My thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for an advance review copy of this book

Just about every time you eat a fruit, vegetable or just something exciting that came from the earth, not was killed for you or by you, you have David Fairchild to thank. And no one even knows about him or at least not enough and I’m so glad there’s now this book to educate and finally give credit where credit’s due. For any discriminate palate, every vegetarian, anyone who likes or loves food, David Fairchild is The Man. Tirelessly traveling the globe and collecting fruits and vegetables (and these will actually be redefined for you by this book too) and plants to liven, broaden and expand America’s palate. He wasn’t the only one, but he was the initiator, the man with the idea and later a plan, who set it all in motion. Nowadays it wouldn’t work, of course, we’ve discovered much of what is out there to eat, did some food based math…how difficult is it to cultivate/how well will it be liked…and got a variety. But back in the day, late 19th/early 20th century, the market was begging for some diversity. Just like America was built on immigrants (the fact so often conveniently forgotten), American diets were built on and dramatically improved by delicious exports from all over the world. Otherwise it would just be meat and some local crops, how’s that for a fad diet? Nutrition and vitamin depleted blandness permeated kitchens and dining tables across the US and David Fairchild changed it. It’s pretty awesome to think about. Avocados, kale, citruses…so many tasty lovely things, most in fact except for his beloved mangosteen, have become such supermarket essentials it’s difficult to imagine life without them. But there are only here become at one point Fairchild has traveled to the land of their origin, tasted them and brought or shipped them back to the US to be cultivated. Again, awesome. Sure, he’s had some fortunate turns, wealthy improbably named benefactors, propitious marriage (to a daughter of Alexander Graham Bell no less, yes that phone guy), a dedicated protégé (Frank Meyer, more on him later), but what Fairchild was able to accomplish through sheer drive and willpower, the scale of his vision and the work he put into realizing it and his unwavering commitment are simply astounding. USA went through expansion, imperialism, international outreach and then, of course, snapped back into nationalism and xenophobia (like it does), but Fairchild always persevered in his belief that new and exciting things from other countries can only be good for the society. Sure it’s just food, but it’s a pretty poignant worldview for this day and age. What he’s done was quite heroic and I’m glad to have learned his story. Now Frank Meyer was a Dutchman who came to the US and picked up Fairchild’s outbound missions as the back stayed back in Washington to manage the operations. Oh and you know all those lovely cherry blossoms Washington D.C. is known for…Fairchild to thank and a great story. There was quite a serious battle of wills between Fairchild and a former childhood friend now formidable foe who protested further imports citing the dangers to existing crops. Food export and cultivation was a complicated process back in the day, but also a huge industry, consider the fact that almost 50% of the population were farmers comparing to only a few % today. Where Fairchild was devoted, Meyer was a fanatic, he traveled China extensively and (stunningly) a lot of it on foot and eventually the dangers (local war and crime), the privation, the disappointment in the world (this s around WWI) and (probably most crucially) the loneliness and isolation proved too much for him. That was probably the most emotionally devastating part of the book, reading about Meyer’s descent into depression and Fairchild unable to help, not unwilling, but through a difference of mentalities and restricted by the prevalent spirit of get up get going, unable to write the right things in his letters. Meyer is the man behind Meyer’s lemons. There is a joke here somewhere about lemons and lemonade, but none that would be in good taste. The man’s trajectory was a tragic one. Fairchild had more food collectors, but none like that. And eventually the need for it died out, the devastation of The Great War reduced the demand for exotic foods. It boggles the mind to consider the variety, though…once there were something like 409 varieties of tomato being cultivated in the US, now it’s about 79. Boggles the mind to consider that once there was a man who traveled the world trying new foods just to expand the range of what was known. A real explorer. So that’s the book, terrific, absorbing, meticulously researched (seriously about a quarter of it is just dedicated to bibliography and notes), incredibly informative and just very necessary. The version I read was a digital ARC from Dutton, which was challenging…for some reason (copyright paranoia?) all the ff,fi and fl are taken out of the text, imagine the fun, so ist oor is first floor and so on. Different publishers handle ARCs differently, most are perfectly readable, not sure why Dutton chooses to do this to their readers. Also (not sure if it’s because it’s an arc of what) no photos, nothing, just two paltry visual aids. That’s just sad, especially for a book so inclusive. But all that aside, I’m glad to have read it. And you should read it too, it’s only slightly longer than this review. If you did read this entire behemoth of a review though, here are some bon mots from the book to make it worth your while, delight and amuse.
To botanist vegetable is any other edible part of the plant that doesn’t contain seeds.
In 1893 US Supreme Court ruled tomatoes to be vegetables so they can collect the higher tariffs.
4 major original citrus fruits are citrons, pomelos, mandarins and papedas.
1893 World’s fair had 2 replicas of Liberty Bell, one made from rolled oats, one from oranges.
The word avocado is a derivative of an Aztec word for testicle.
Fun, right? The book has tons of these. Thanks Netgalley.

Unless you live in a farming area, you probably don't think much about where the plants that make up our food come from. Sure we might know that tomatoes are from South America or that dates come from the Middle East, but how did they get here?

This wonderful book is the biography of David Fairchild, the little known but intrepid plant explorer who was responsible for many plant introductions that transformed America. It's an absolutely fascinating story and wonderfully written.

I had no idea that so many plants we consider s common from pistachios to Meyer lemons came to the US from other countries specifically to be grown as crops.

I loved this book.

This was an unexpected gem of a book. It's the story of David Fairchild, an American botanist who traveled the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to find plants and fruits that were unknown in America. He sent cuttings and seeds back home to the U.S. Department of Agriculture so that the specimens could be studied and possibly transplanted and who knows, maybe become popular. And in fact, that happened many times, and explains how we happen to enjoy avocados and kale and quinces and mangoes and different varieties of lemons and grains and much more.

The story of a botanist does not sound intrinsically fascinating to me, but Fairchild's enthusiasm for plants and for world travel and adventure helped carbonate the story. And his friendship with Barbour Lathrop was the other ingredient that turned The Food Explorer into a story for more audiences than the botanically-minded. He was a wealthy world traveler who befriended Fairchild when Fairchild was on one of his first trips. About twenty years older than Fairchild, Lathrop became a kind of mentor to Fairchild and introduced him to adventure travel. He also funded many of Fairchild's trips before the Department of Agriculture discovered the potential value of Fairchild's contributions. He was also a rather eccentric character who offsets Fairchild's straight arrow nature to good effect in the book.

(Thanks to Penguin/Dutton and NetGalley for a digital review copy.)

Book Description
The true adventures of David Fairchild, a late-nineteenth-century food explorer who traveled the globe and introduced diverse crops like avocados, mangoes, seedless grapes--and thousands more--to the American plate.
My Thoughts
In the 19th century, preparing meals and eating was solely viewed as necessary for survival. People didn't go on culinary adventures or look for exotic ingredients to create flavor combinations to delight the palate. Enter David Fairchild, a botanist who traveled the globe in search of food items that American farmers could grow that would then provide more choices to the American eater.
Daniel Stone has written an incredibly detailed and insightful book based on David Fairchild's journeys. Love kale, mangos, avocados, pomegranates and hundreds of other crops? You can thank Mr. Fairchild. Mr. Stone used Mr.Fairchild's extensive notes to bring his journeys in the 19th and 20th centuries to life. World travel was much more complex than what we are used to today and David had many epic adventures. In addition, he had to fight our government's reluctance to bring non-native plants to America. There are so many interesting stories about the foods we as a country were eating and how Fairchild was so instrumental in shaping our culinary canvas.
I read this from beginning to end in one book binge. As someone who considers herself a foodie, I am amazed that I wasn't familiar with all that David Fairchild accomplished. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in food. It was enlightening and enjoyable.
Thank you, Daniel Stone, Penguin Group Dutton, and NetGalley for the digital ARC. Winning a contest is always good, but winning an outstanding book is even better.