Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves

“In 2012, the Royal Society–the UK’s national academy of science–declared refrigeration the most important invention in the history of food and drink… more significant than the knife, the oven, the plow, and even the millennia of selective breeding that gave us the livestock, fruits, and vegetables we recognize today.”

This seemingly radical idea is supported in fascinating detail by Nicola Twilley’s exploration of what she calls “our ability to command cold at will,” which dates back little more than 150 years.

The extensive and largely hidden system known as the cold chain, designed to keep perishable food from perishing as long as possible, transforms seasonal abundance into perpetual supply and provides avocados in Singapore and New England blue-fin tuna in Tokyo.

Twilley consults an amazing array of specialists, bringing their expertise to life in a way that recalls John McPhee’s ability to translate seemingly arcane knowledge into practical discovery, and linking a Rwandan woman who keeps a single cow to a Delaware juice storage facility to dumpling factories in China.

An engrossing account of how the world has been transformed by a technology often taken for granted.

Hardcover.