SPICE

For a pinch of flavor, the world went to war.

The salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar sitting in your kitchen cost a few dollars. For most of history, each was worth more than its weight in gold — and men killed, sailed, enslaved, and built empires to control them.

Spice, Book Three of Materials That Changed the World, tells eight true stories of the flavors that seasoned empires. Follow a single craving — for something sweeter, saltier, hotter, richer — as it drags fleets across oceans, topples kingdoms, and redraws the map of the world.

Inside, you'll discover:

The salt that bought human beings on the trade routes of the Sahara

The nutmeg so valuable the Dutch traded away Manhattan to keep the island that grew it — then slaughtered the people who did

The sea road to Calicut that pulled Europe into Asia and changed everything

The night a harbor was dumped full of tea — and a revolution began

The sweetest substance on earth, which built colonies and then burned them down

This is history with a taste you already know. Each chapter takes something off your shelf and shows you the ships, warehouses, armies, and empires hidden inside it — flavor as one of the steadiest engines of conquest in all of history.

Everything here is true. Open your spice rack after reading it and you'll see an atlas of empire.

If you loved Mark Kurlansky's Salt and Cod, or Sapiens, you'll devour this — the latest in the Materials That Changed the World series.