#000544
Amaranth: From the Past, For the Future
John N. Cole
An accessible history and appreciation of amaranth, the ancient grain-and-greens crop that Rodale Press championed in the late 1970s as a promising answer to world hunger. Environmental journalist John N. Cole traces amaranth across some six thousand years — from its sacred, high-protein place in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, where it was popped and pressed into ceremonial cakes, through its uses as grain, leafy vegetable, and even red dye in Asia, Africa, and the Americas — and into the research stations reviving it as an alternative crop. Commissioned by Rodale, the book blends cultural history, agronomy, and recipes into a readable case for a nutritious plant that mainstream agriculture had largely forgotten. It is both a portrait of a remarkable species and a document of the organic movement's search for resilient, high-value crops.
more…less ▴
The author
John N. Cole (1923–2003) was an American environmental journalist best known as a founder of the Maine Times and the author of numerous books on nature, place, and rural life. He wrote in a plain, engaged style that suited Rodale's mission of bringing overlooked ideas about food and land to a broad audience.
The book
Amaranth: From the Past, For the Future was published by Rodale Press in 1979, part of the press's active promotion of amaranth as a rediscovered crop. Across roughly 300 pages Cole weaves together the plant's deep history — its ceremonial role among the Aztecs, its dispersal through Asia and Africa — with contemporary agronomy and practical recipes.
How it has aged
Cole's enthusiasm has largely been vindicated: amaranth is now a well-established "ancient grain," valued for its protein, lysine content, and gluten-free seed, and it appears routinely in health foods worldwide. The book reads today as an early, prescient piece of advocacy, though its research-frontier optimism belongs to the moment when amaranth was still a curiosity rather than a supermarket staple. As cultural history and introduction it holds up well.
For more context
Pair with modern agronomic writing on amaranth and quinoa and with histories of pre-Columbian foodways.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- John N. Cole
- Publisher
- Rodale Press
- Place of publication
- Emmaus, PA
- Year
- 1979
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Nature
- Location
- Colorado