This brief – but nice – review appeared in the October 29, 2007 edition of Publishers Weekly. It also serves as a pretty good pocket summary of what the book is about.
“The world’s most humble fruit has caused inordinate damage to nature and man, and Popular Science journalist Koeppel (To See Every Bird on Earth) embarks on an intelligent, chock-a-block sifting through the havoc. Seedless, sexless bananas evolved from a wild inedible fruit first cultivated in Southeast Asia, and was probably the “apple” that got Adam and Eve in trouble in the Garden of Eden.
From there the fruit traveled to Africa and across the Pacific, arriving on U.S. shores probably with the Europeans in the 15th century. However, the history of the banana turned sinister as American businessmen caught on to the marketability of this popular, highly perishable fruit then grown in Jamaica. Thanks to the building of the railroad through Costa Rica by the turn of the century, the United Fruit company flourished in Central America, its tentacles extending into all facets of government and industry, toppling “banana republics” and igniting labor wars. Meanwhile, the Gros Michel variety was annihilated by a fungus called Panama disease (Sigatoka), which today threatens the favored Cavendish, as Koeppel sounds the alarm, shuttling to genetics-engineering labs from Honduras to Belgium. His sage, informative study poses the question fairly whether it’s time for consumers to reverse a century of strife and exploitation epitomized by the purchase of one banana.”
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman 
Dear Mr. Koeppel:
I just now am reading your book. I did not know Phil Rowe (may he rest in peace)–personally though I had met him a few months prior to his death. I had met his wife a few days before his suicide.
I believe Mr. Rowe was a victim of the Wall Street Tech Balloon. I understand his life savings for he and his family were dramatically reduced by the 2001 crash. I suspect that was the precipitant.
I later visited the library at FHIA which was dedicated to his memory. I understand from all that he was an esteemed and gracious man.
JL