Category: Books

“Then I read Hume’s Enquiry, this wonderful, humane book saying that nobody has all the answers. What we know is what we have evidence for. We do the best we can, but anybody who claims to be able to deduce or have revelation about The Truth – with both Ts capitalised – is wrong. It doesn’t work that way. The only reasonable way to approach life is with an attitude of humane scepticism. I felt that a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders when I read that book.”

“In the early eighteen-seventies, a smallpox pandemic that accompanied the Franco-Prussian War killed more than half a million Europeans.

Smallpox claimed the lives of tens of thousands of French soldiers, yet the Prussians lost fewer than five hundred men. That was because Prussia vaccinated its entire Army against the virus, and France did not.”

Empires of Food, by Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas.