The Story of Food in the Human Past: How What We Ate Made Us Who We Are. ROBYN E. CUTRIGHT,. 2021. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. $79.95 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-8173-2082-9. $34.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-8173-5985-0. $34.95 (e-book), ISBN 978-0-8173-9338-0 .

The Story of Food in the Human Past: How What We Ate Made Us Who We Are. ROBYN E. CUTRIGHT. 2021. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. $79.95 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-8173-2082-9. $34.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-8173-5985-0. $34.95 (e-book), ISBN 978-0-8173-9338-0.

If you like the title of The Story of Food in the Human Past: How What We Ate Made Us Who We Are, you will probably like the book very much. Robyn Cutright is an excellent writer, and the stories she tells in this book are fascinating. If you are someone who reads the title and says, “Wait—one single story of food in the past? Who is ‘us’?” then you may not appreciate it. The book's title aligns reasonably well with its contents, and Cutright's efforts to streamline “food in the human past” (australopiths through the nineteenth century AD, biological and cultural entanglements, potables and solid foods, psychoactive and nonpsychoactive substances) to fit into 205 pages (plus 60 pages of endnotes and bibliography) will not suit everyone.

In The Story of Food, Cutright seeks to answer two questions: “How did food shape us as humans?” and...