Roth’s Magic Bean is about soybeans and so much more. The story of the soybean in the United States is one of multiple attempts to make a plant profitable through the application of science and persuasion by scientists, government bureaucrats, the usda, producer groups, corporations, and other interested parties. Roth’s organizing question—Was the soybean destined to flourish in the United States, or was its success a result of lucky breaks?—will simultaneously please and frustrate those who view the past through a lens of social-construction historiography. Few historians would claim that anything is destined for success or failure. Instead, most agree that human intervention and advocacy, creativity and innovation, not to mention profit and loss, all figure into an outcome. The “lucky breaks” of Roth’s narrative are the stuff that animate any narrative.
That said, Roth tells a fascinating story of the waxing and waning of the soybean’s fortunes in...