Oceans of Grain

"Original and intriguing…[Nelson] makes a strong case that the wheat trade’s contribution to history has not been given its due.”

“Scott Reynolds Nelson in his gripping Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World…is quite serious about the world-ordering power of wheat. Moreover, his grain obsession is infectious. You begin the book a sober reader, calmly appreciating the complexity of historical causation, and you finish it a raving wheat monomaniac.”

“An incredibly timely history… Nelson makes a persuasive case that grain production, storage, transport and trade was the defining factor in the rise and fall of civilisations from Rome to Byzantium to the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia…”

“[A] sweeping and timely new history...vitally provocative.”

"Readable, original and provocative, this is a book that deserves attention."

“Oceans of Grain is provocative. Well researched and readable, Nelson has written a book that will fascinate both professional historians and regular folk."
 

"Oceans of Grain is an eye opening feat of historical reconsideration.”

"In the vein of other groundbreaking historical revisionist books, Oceans of Grain runs a fine toothed comb through history to tell an unexpected tale of what caused some empires to crumble while others survived and thrived: grain. …much as he does in his previous book, Steel Drivin’ Man, Reynolds Nelson introduces new key actors that shed important light on the story. A quick read despite its length, Oceans of Grain’s reinterpretation of a humble commodity’s history makes a case that wheat has had as much of an impact on our country and our planet as cotton—and that the fight for the power of grain is far from over.”

“A sweeping and timely new history...vitally provocative.”

“American cotton changed the world in the first half of the nineteenth century, American wheat in its second half. Scott Reynolds Nelson’s globe-spanning exploration of the powers of a humble grain to topple empires, enable industrialization, build cities, and redirect trade flows is the kind of commodity history one wishes for: attentive to politics, connected as well as comparative in perspective, and with a knack for telling details. After reading this fast-paced book, the wars, revolutions, and empires of the nineteenth century will never seem the same.”

“Nelson’s signature mastery of scale is on full display in Oceans of Grain. Here we watch him play out the revolutionary implications of the American seizure of the international wheat market in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. This remarkable book rearranges what you think you know about the United States and the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.”

“Nelson reveals the deep international career of wheat as a maker and breaker of empires and of people from Roman times until the twentieth century. Oceans of Grain is a book of astounding reach and depth, wholly original, gripping to read, and destined to become an instant classic. Rice and maize should be so lucky.”

“Oceans of Grain is the best work of history I have read in a very long time. Witty and wise, it reveals how conspirators and heads of state, workers and entrepreneurs, and philosophers and economists turned the human struggle for daily bread into wars and empires, revolutions and conquests, feasts and famines. It takes readers from the granaries and ancient trade pathways of Europe to the US Civil War and the overthrow of slavery, the founding of empires, the slaughterhouses of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, and, finally, to our contemporary, interconnected, and profoundly unequal world. Along the way, Scott Reynolds Nelson introduces us to the individuals who made and remade this world. Some are welcome new acquaintances and others—like Abraham Lincoln and Vladimir Lenin—are shown in such new light that it feels as if we are meeting them for the first time.”