Milk!: A 10,000-Year Food Fracas by Mark Kurlansky

According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a splatter of the goddess Hera's breast milk became our galaxy, the Milky Way. But while mother's milk may be the essence of nourishment, it is the milk of other mammals that humans have cultivated ever since the domestication of animals more than 10,000 years ago. Today, milk is a test case in the most pressing issues in food politics, from industrial farming and animal rights to GMOs, the locavore movement and advocates for raw milk, who controversially reject pasteurisation. Tracing the liquid's diverse history from antiquity to the present, "Milk!" details its curious and crucial role in cultural evolution, religion, nutrition, politics, and economics.