Synopses & Reviews
To award-winning journalist and tireless traveler Susan Seligson, bread -- whether it's a crusty baguette, a round of pita, or a flat of matzo -- is nothing less than the currency of a culture, a reflection of people's beliefs, their daily lives, and blood memories. Passionately curious, Seligson has an eye for finding meaning in everyday rituals. In
Going with the Grain, she stalks pillowy round loaves on their way to and from the communal bakeries of Morocco's ancient city of Fès, witnesses the painstaking creation of what may be the world's most expensive artisanal
pain au levain, and tours the gleaming, sterile steel innards of a mammoth Wonder Bread factory.
In prose shaped with conviction and leavened by wit, Seligson introduces us to the food engineer of the U.S. Army bread project working in the laboratory to create a palatable bread with a shelf life of three years and the Alabama octogenarian for whose biscuits devotees happily drive an hour each way for breakfast. From the tents of Jordan's Wad? Musá to the schmurah matzo factories of Brooklyn, from the kitchens of New Delhi to the granaries of the lush Irish countryside, Seligson braids her adventures with fascinating historical detail and lively personal reflections about this most fundamental of foods. Whether bread appears in its simplest form, a mixture of flour and water baked on a blazing hot surface, or as the product of modern scientific ingenuity, its importance is best expressed by the Arabic word aysh. It is also the word for "life."
Review
Norman Mailer
I didn't know that anyone could write a good zippy book about bread, but I was wrong. Full salute to Susan Seligson.
Review
Bernard Clayton
Author of The Complete Book of Breads
An unabashed lover of all kinds of breads, Susan Seligson is on a discovery path to city breads and country breads in cultures and cuisines across the world, reveling in their taste and texture in her sometimes raucous, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes spectacular but always delightful book, Going with the Grain.
Review
Mary Oliver
Author of What Do We Know
Susan Seligson's book is full of good spirits -- the grains, the bakers of bread, and most especially the sturdy, curious, worldly, and affirmative spirit of the author herself. Who would have guessed that bread could be such a fascinating subject? Going with the Grain is richly informative, heartwarmingly respectful of many different cultures, and never less than celebratory.
About the Author
Susan Seligson has written for
The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Redbook, and
Outside, among other publications. With her husband, cartoonist Howie Schneider, she is coauthor of four children's books, including the award-winning
Amos: The Story of an Old Dog and His Couch. She lives in North Truro, Massachusetts.