How did wheat take over the world?

I was smitten by the wheat fields of Montana in high school. My dad and younger brother and I were headed to Glacier National Park when the rolling fields stretched from the horizons to capture my heart. I was sure that some day I'd live that far from town and drive tractors on fields that big. But I didn't wonder why there was so much wheat in Montana or how the crop I wanted so badly to raise affected the ecology of the area. 

Montana State University professor Catherine Zabinsky has thought about those things and wrote a book about them. My recent review  of Amber Waves: The Extraordinary Biography of Wheat, from Wild Grass to World Megacrop is in the current Issues in Science and Technology. 

I was living 35 miles from town when I wrote the review, but I wasn't on a Montana wheat farm.