Synopses & Reviews
"Warren Belasco is a witty, wonderfully observant guide to the hopes and fears that every era projects onto its culinary future. This enlightening study reads like time-travel for foodies."and#151;Laura Shapiro, author of
Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America"In his insightful look at human imaginings about their food and its future sufficiency, Warren Belasco makes use of everything from academic papers, films, and fiction to journalism, advertising and worldand#8217;s fairs to trace a pattern of public concern over two centuries. His wide-ranging scholarship humbles all would-be futurists by reminding us that ours is not the first generation, nor is it likely to be the last, to argue inconclusively about whether we can best feed the world with more spoons, better manners or a larger pie. Truly painless education; a wonderful read!"and#151;Joan Dye Gussow, author This Organic Life
"Warren Belasco serves up an intellectual feast, brilliantly dissecting two centuries of expectations regarding the future of food and hunger. Meals to Come provides an essential guide to thinking clearly about the worrisome question as to whether the world can ever be adequately and equitably fed."and#151;Joseph J. Corn, co-author of Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future
"This astute, sly, warmly human critique of the basic belly issues that have absorbed and defined Americans politically, socially, and economically for the past 200 years is a knockout. Warren Belascoand#8217;s important book, crammed with knowledge, is absolutely necessary for an understanding of where we are now."and#151;Betty Fussell, author of My Kitchen Wars
Review
"During my forty year culinary career, there have been a select number of books that became touchstones, volumes that seemed to arrive just when inspiration was needed or direction was appropriate, books that somehow enhanced my sense of having found my calling. The newest addition to the list is a work of culinary history by Rachel Laudan."
Review
"It seems like every time you hear someone mention processed food, it's accompanied with the words 'bad' or 'unhealthy,' plus a shaking finger. Unless you're author Rachel Laudan."
Review
"Magnificent . . . Some of Laudan's 'diffusion maps' of particular styles of cuisine are miniature masterpieces of cultural history."
Review
"Epic in range. . . . Its solidity and substance make a change from the day-to-day scatter of information delivered and consumed in tweets and sound bites."
Review
"A fascinating account of the rise and fall of cuisines. . . . Touching on all parts of the globe, Rachel explores human development through the vastly understated tool of food."
Review
"A new standard for global culinary history."
Review
"To her impressively thorough research Laudan brings a lifetime that has included practical experience on the farm, in the kitchen, and in the classroom. This means that her exposition is as lucid as it is authoritative. Her bibliography and notes bear witness to her deep learning, and her book, in its scope and originality, gives deserved prominence to a long-neglected theme in world history. It is a triumph, pointing the way to a wholly new kind of historiography that can hold its own with more familiar work on political, economic, social, and intellectual history."
Synopsis
Since the founding of the United States, culinary texts and practices have played a crucial role in the making of cultural identities and social hierarchies.
A Taste of Power examines culinary writing and practices as forces for the production of social order and, at the same time, points of cultural resistance. Culinary writing has helped shape dominant ideas of nationalism, gender, and sexuality, suggesting that eating right is a gateway to becoming an American, a good citizen, an ideal man, or a perfect wife and mother.
In this brilliant interdisciplinary work, Katharina Vester examines how cookbooks became a way for women to participate in nation-building before they had access to the vote or public office, for Americans to distinguish themselves from Europeans, for middle-class authors to assert their class privileges, for men to claim superiority over women in the kitchen, and for lesbian authors to insert themselves into the heteronormative economy of culinary culture. A Taste of Power engages in close reading of a wide variety of sources and genres to uncover the intersections of food, politics, and privilege in American culture.
Synopsis
Rachel Laudan tells the remarkable story of the rise and fall of the worldand#8217;s great cuisinesand#151;from the mastery of grain cooking some twenty thousand years ago, to the presentand#151;in this superbly researched book. Probing beneath the apparent confusion of dozens of cuisines to reveal the underlying simplicity of the culinary family tree, she shows how periodic seismic shifts in and#147;culinary philosophyand#8221;and#151;beliefs about health, the economy, politics, society and the godsand#151;prompted the construction of new cuisines, a handful of which, chosen as the cuisines of empires, came to dominate the globe.
Cuisine and Empire shows how merchants, missionaries, and the military took cuisines over mountains, oceans, deserts, and across political frontiers. Laudanand#8217;s innovative narrative treats cuisine, like language, clothing, or architecture, as something constructed by humans. By emphasizing how cooking turns farm products into food and by taking the globe rather than the nation as the stage, she challenges the agrarian, romantic, and nationalistic myths that underlie the contemporary food movement.
and#160;
Synopsis
In this sweeping history of food and eating in modern America, Harvey Levenstein explores the social, economic, and political factors that have shaped the American diet since 1930.
Synopsis
In this wide-ranging and entertaining study Harvey Levenstein tells of the remarkable transformation in how Americans ate that took place from 1880 to 1930.
Synopsis
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, working-class Americans had eating habits that were distinctly shaped by jobs, families, neighborhoods, and the tools, utilities, and size of their kitchensalong with their cultural heritage. How the Other Half Ate is a deep exploration by historian and lecturer Katherine Turner that delivers an unprecedented and thoroughly researched study of the changing food landscape in American working-class families from industrialization through the 1950s.
Relevant to readers across a range of disciplineshistory, economics, sociology, urban studies, womens studies, and food studiesthis work fills an important gap in historical literature by illustrating how families experienced food and cooking during the so-called age of abundance. Turner delivers an engaging portrait that shows how Americas working class, in a multitude of ways, has shaped the foods we eat today.
Synopsis
"A scrupulously researched and masterfully written history of urban working class American foodways. Turner boldly challenges conventional nostalgia for the 'good old days' of home cooking." Warren Belasco, author of
Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food
"Every page of this book is enlightening. Katherine Leonard Turner has tackled one of the most elusive topics in culinary historythe ordinary food of ordinary peopleand placed it in the rich context of their daily lives. Her thoughtful, detailed investigation is certain to become indispensable in the study of turn-of-the-century America." Laura Shapiro, author of Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century
Synopsis
In this provocative and lively addition to his acclaimed writings on food, Warren Belasco takes a sweeping look at a little-explored yet timely topic: humanity's deep-rooted anxiety about the future of food. People have expressed their worries about the future of the food supply in myriad ways, and here Belasco explores a fascinating array of material ranging over two hundred yearsand#151;from futuristic novels and films to world's fairs, Disney amusement parks, supermarket and restaurant architecture, organic farmers' markets, debates over genetic engineering, and more. Placing food issues in this deep historical context, he provides an innovative framework for understanding the future of food todayand#151;when new prophets warn us against complacency at the same time that new technologies offer promising solutions. But will our grandchildren's grandchildren enjoy the cornucopian bounty most of us take for granted? This first history of the future to put food at the center of the story provides an intriguing perspective on this question for anyoneand#151;from general readers to policy analysts, historians, and students of the futureand#151;who has wondered about the future of life's most basic requirement.
Synopsis
andldquo;A highly original, well-theorized analysis of how over 200 yearsand#39; worth of American cooking literature reveals changes in cultural identities. Framing a narrative around questions of power and hegemony, Vester breathes new life into the clichandeacute;, andlsquo;You are what you eat.andrsquo;andrdquo;andmdash;Warren Belasco, author of
Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Foodandquot;Through a series of zesty readings, A Taste of Power teaches us how to parse the politics of cooking and eating. A keen cultural analyst, Vester shows how the salt of normativity and the pepper of resistance have infused the recipes we live by and thus every bite we eat.andquot;andmdash;Kristin Hoganson, author of Consumersandrsquo; Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity
andquot;Vester takes everyday acts, like cooking, and masterfully illustrates their connections to larger cultural questions, such as sexuality. A Taste of Power proves that nothing is off the table in discussions of food and power.andquot;andmdash;Amy Bentley, author of Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet
About the Author
Harvey Levenstein is Professor Emeritus of History at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Among his books are Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, Revised Edition (California, 2003), Seductive Journey: American Tourists in France from the Jefferson to the Jazz Age (1998), and Communism, Anticommunism and the CIO (1981).
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Mastering Grain Cookery, 20,000and#150;300 B.C.E.
2. The Barley-Wheat Cuisines of the Ancient Empires, 500 B.C.E.and#150;400 C.E.
3. Buddhist Cuisines, 260 B.C.E.and#150;4800 C.E.
4. Islam Transforms the Cuisines of Central and West Asia, 800and#150;1650 C.E.
5. Christianity Transforms the Cuisines of Europe and the Americas, 100and#150;1650 C.E.
6. Prelude to Modern Cuisines: Northern Europe, 1650and#150;1840
7. Modern Cuisines: The Expansion of Middling Cuisines, 1810and#150;1920
8. Modern Cuisines: The Globalization of Middling Cuisines, 1920and#150;2000
Notes
Bibliography
Index