There’s drama in dairy. In his new book, “Milk! A 10,000-Year Food Fracas” (Bloomsbury), Mark Kurlansky covers the rich history of the food group — from the way milk transformed agriculture to the fierce political debates over its safety.

“To think of milk as just another food would be to ignore the galaxy we live in,” Kurlansky writes.

Here are some of the book’s surprising facts:

Though many erroneously give the Italians credit for the invention of ice cream, “there was ice cream or an ice-cream-like frozen dessert in the Tang dynasty (618 to 907), and ice cream probably originated in the eighth century, a golden age of Chinese culture,” Kurlansky writes. As time went on, it blew up: Doctors in Italy even prescribed ice cream to patients in the 1700s. No one knows how it got to the US, but our early leaders may have had something to do with it: George Washington was a fan, and Thomas Jefferson brought 200 vanilla beans to the US from France, mostly so he could put them in his ice cream.

Starting as early as the 15th century, when milk often wasn’t very pure and was forbidden to drink on holy days, recipes regularly included almond milk as an option instead of cow’s milk. However, it fell out of use when coconut milk came onto the scene as Britain began colonizing Jamaica. “People are always shocked to learn that almond milk has been around for so long,” Kurlansky says.

After a long history of being the leading country for milk production, the US has recently fallen to second place, behind India, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Meanwhile, there’s a growing thirst for milk in China, despite longstanding assumptions that the populace can’t process milk well. Nearly 40 percent of people in China drink milk now — the highest percentage in its history.

In New York City in the 19th century, much of our dairy came from breweries, which fed cows their spent grains and kept them in filthy stables. The resulting milk was “low in fat and watery, with a light blue color,” Kurlansky writes. In 1840, about half the babies born in Manhattan died before the age of 5, and some leading thinkers blamed the milk. “New York City was probably the worst place for this ‘swill milk,’ ” Kurlanksy says.

Greek feta cheese, which is made with sheep’s milk, is one of the oldest cheeses in the world. It’s mentioned often in Homer’s writings, and it was central to the Spartans’ diet. As time went on, civilizations began to favor cow’s milk cheese because it wasn’t as crumbly and could travel well. Today, nearly all of the world’s most popular cheese, such as brie, Camembert, cheddar and Parmesan, are made from cow’s milk.