Beans : a history

There's some good stuff in here, but it's almost impossibly boring. The author exudes old-school smarter-than-you professor vibes. We learn about every Greek and Roman philosopher who mentioned any bean, and any old cookbook that mentioned them. What utterly lacks is a connection to culture and food, or just a voice. It's just factoid after boring quote after factoid with some pretty useless recipe(-like paragraph)s. This book could be about the history of stones, or baskets, or people with brown hair, and it would be equally in tone and lack of excitement.