A GUARDIAN, ECONOMIST AND PROSPECT BOOK OF THE YEAR

'A superb book' Simon Sebag Montefiore

'An empowering story of human ingenuity' Economist

'Full of curious facts' The Times

Causes of death have changed irrevocably across time. In the course of a few centuries we have gone from a world where disease or violence were likely to strike anyone at any age, and where famine could be just one bad harvest away, to one where in many countries excess food is more of a problem than a lack of it. Why h...