The Taste of War

Creates a whole new and original dimension to the disasters of war. Every page contains a fresh insight ... Powerfully written ... punctuated with brilliant micro-historical accounts, is bound to prove the most thorough and important study of the topic for many years to come

John Cornwell

A major achievement. The Taste of War presents a wholly novel approach to a conflict which still informs our understanding of the contemporary world. It will stir family memories of privation and endurance wherever it is read.

Professor Chris Bayly, author of Forgotten Armies

Food was so important and so universal an element to the experience of the Second World War that it is extraordinary no one has written its history before. Lizzie Collingham's pioneering book, ranging from the famine lands of Eastern Europe, China and India, via the development of German and Allied policies, to the new plenty of America, is a magnificent example of the new global history-writing at its very best.

Nicholas Stargardt

Every now and again a book comes along that transforms our understanding of a subject that had previously seemed so well worn and familiar. That is the measure of Lizzie Collingham's achievement in this outstanding global account of the role played by food (and its absence) during the Second World War. It will now be impossible to think of the war in the old way. She has added a whole new layer of understanding not only about the way the war was fought but about the gruelling consequences for tens of millions of non-combatants world-wide when the food chain collapsed. Now, once again, Collingham reminds us, the global food economy is facing a crisis.

Richard Overy, Literary Review

This fascinating calorie-centric history of the greatest conflict in world history is scholarly and well-written but, above all, wholly convincing. After this book, no historian will be able to write a comprehensive history of the second world war without putting the multifarious issues of food production and consumption centre stage.

Andrew Roberts, Financial Times

Lizzie Collingham's book possesses the notable virtue of originality...[She] has gathered many strands to pursue an important theme across a global canvas. She reminds us of the timeless truth that all human and political behaviour is relative.

Max Hastings, The Sunday Times

Powerful and important...Like all the best ideas, Collingham's means that a lot of events fall satisfyingly into place.

Diane Purkiss, The Independent