Hunger: An Unnatural History
by Sharman Apt Russell
Basic Books £14.99, pp288

'Hunger is a country we enter every day, like a commuter across a friendly border,' begins Sharman Apt Russell's elegantly written mixture of history, science and memoir. What follows is an engaging journey through the full spectrum of hunger, from the familiar stomach rumblings to the global issue of famine.

Russell is an American academic whose previous books about roses and butterflies were written with a similar combination of scholarship and eloquence. But hunger is a particularly vast, emotive subject - 'as big as history,' writes Russell - so it is all the more impressive that her book covers so much ground in such a cohesive and sensitive way.

Starting with a discussion of the professional fasters or 'hunger artists' of the 19th century who went without food as a form of theatrical spectacle, Russell reflects on their modern equivalent, magician David Blaine's much-publicised fast in 2003.

After describing the 'metabolic gymnastics' the body performs without food, and chronicling her own four-day abortive fast - she blacked out on her second night without food - Russell delves into the history of fasting for health or ideological reasons, and the formidable problems of how we should deal with famine, with warmth and intelligence.