Many books have been written about the history of cinchona and the associated development of quinine to treat malaria. Several scholarly books have appeared recently, including Matthew James Crawford's The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630–1800 (2016) and Samir Boumediene's La colonisation de savoir: Une histoire de plantes médicinales du “Nouveau Monde” (1492–1750) (2016). What could another book on the topic add to these? In this book, Gänger aims to break the triumphalism that often pervaded nationalist narratives by showing how knowledge and use of the bark transcended political boundaries and how cinchona was adapted and refashioned according to local circumstances; the local, she argues, was an integral part of the global. In arguing for a global perspective, Gänger's study extends beyond the Americas and Europe to include Morocco, Dutch colonies, the Chinese and Mughal empires, and Tokugawa Japan. While the book's geographical...
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