New Books in Food
Episodes
Margot Finn, "Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution" (Rutgers UP, 2017)
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
You eat what you are and are what you eat, right? There is an increasing number of Americans who pay great attention to the food they eat, buy organic...
Stephan J. Guyenet, "The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat" (Flatiron Books, 2017)
19 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill talks with Dr. Stephan J. Guyenet, neurobiologist an...
Venus Bivar, “Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France” (UNC Press, 2018)
16 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Venus Bivar documents the de...
Alyshia Gálvez, “Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico” (U. California Press, 2018)
19 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The North American Free Trade Agreement—or NAFTA, as we Americans call it—is very much in the news of late, primarily because President Trump has ...
Shachar M. Pinsker, “A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture” (NYU Press, 2018)
06 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The café, long a European institution, was also a stimulant and a refuge for European Jewish culture. In cities across Europe, and later in Palestine...
Kelley Fanto Deetz, “Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine” (UP of Kentucky, 2017)
26 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of “Southern hospitality” began to take form in the late eighteenth century and became especially associated with Virginia’s grand p...
Norah MacKendrick, “Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics” (U California Press, 2018).
19 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Consumers today have a lot of choices. Whether in stores or online, people are inundated by an abundance of options for what to buy. At the same time,...
Adrienne Rose Bitar, “Diet and the Disease of Civilization” (Rutgers UP, 2018)
17 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Diet books are a multi-billion dollar industry and in Diet and the Disease of Civilization (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Adrienne Rose Bitar explo...
Jeff Koelher, “Where the Wild Coffee Grows: The Untold Story of Coffee from the Cloud Forests of Ethiopia to Your Cup” (Bloomsbury, 2017)
02 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Is life without coffee possible? Before you answer, first admit that you know almost nothing about the plant that you depend on to deliver you conscio...
Anna Zeide, “Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry” (U California Press, 2018)
16 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Most everything Americans eat today comes out of cans. Some of it emerges from the iconic steel cylinders and much of the rest from the mammoth proces...
Sean Sherman, “The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen” (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)
22 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Chef Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota and originally from Pine Ridge Reservation, has become one of the most important voices in the Indigenous foods revit...
Peter A. Kopp, “Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley” (U California Press, 2016)
09 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Environmental historian Peter A. Kopp‘s book Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley (University of California Pre...
Andrew Friedman, “Chefs, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll” (Ecco Press, 2018)
05 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I first really got to know Andrew Friedman after the death of our mutual friend, the great food writer Josh Ozersky. Andrew is a widely respected food...
D. Harris and P. Guiffre, “Taking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen” (Rutgers UP, 2015)
22 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Taking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen (Rutgers University Press, 2015), Deborah Harris and Patti Giuffre t...
Mark Padoongpatt, “Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America” (U of California Press, 2017)
13 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America (University of California Press, 2017), Mark Padoongpatt weaves together histories of food, ...
Johan Swinnen and Devin Briski, “Beeronomics: How Beer Explains the World” (Oxford UP, 2017)
31 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Beer has been a part of human civilization dating back to its beginnings. In summarizing the role it has played over the millennia, Johan Swinnen and ...
Bryant Simon, “The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives” (The New Press, 2017)
06 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On September 3, 1991, a fire erupted at the Imperial Foods factory in the small town of Hamlet, North Carolina. Twenty-five people died behind the fac...
Andrew Smith, “Terror and Terroir: The Winegrowers of the Languedoc and Modern France” (Manchester University Press, 2016)
06 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Smith‘s Terror and Terroir: The Winegrowers of the Languedoc and Modern France (Manchester University Press, 2016) is a political history of ...
Nina Savelle-Rocklin, “Food for Thought: Perspectives on Eating Disorders” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
12 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The psychology of eating disorders is poorly understood. Recent trends in research and treatment focus near-exclusively on behaviors around food and w...
Faegheh Shirazi, “Brand Islam: The Marketing and Commodification of Piety” (U. Texas Press, 2016)
05 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Religion is big business nowadays. Within the global context of Muslim consumers Islamic commodities have become increasingly popular over the past fe...
Alice Weinreb, “Modern Hungers: Food and Power in Twentieth-Century Germany” (Oxford UP, 2017)
13 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Food is a hot topic these days, and not just among the folks posting pictures of their dinner on Instagram. A growing number of scholars in many field...
Sophie Egan, “Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are” (William Morrow, 2017)
24 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are (William Morrow Books, 2017), food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director Sophie E...
Michael W. Twitty, “The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South” (Amistad, 2017)
19 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The “ownership” of Southern food is a divisive cultural issue, reflective of the ongoing struggle for racial justice in America. Michael Twitty sh...
Diana Kennedy, “Nothing Fancy: Recipes and Recollections of Soul-Satisfying Food” (U of Texas Press, 2016)
22 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Diana Kennedy, Nothing Fancy: Recipes and Recollections of Soul-Satisfying Food (University of Texas Press, 2016). Don’t be misled by this title. It...
Demet Guzey, “Food on Foot: A History of Eating on Trails and in the Wild” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
14 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Napoleon famously stated that an army marches on its stomach. Of no less importance is the food that keeps exploration moving, whether polar, desert, ...
Michaela DeSoucey, “Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food” (Princeton UP, 2016)
25 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A heritage food in France, and a high-priced obscurity in the United States. But in both countries, foie gras, the specially fattened liver of a duck ...
Jordan D. Rosenblum, “The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
09 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World Jordan D. Rosenblum explores how cultures critique and defend their religious food practices. In parti...
David B. Goldstein and Amy L. Tigner, eds. “Culinary Shakespeare: Staging Food and Drink in Early Modern England” (Duquesne UP, 2016)
19 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Culinary Shakespeare: Staging Food and Drink in Early Modern England (Duquesne University Press, 2016) is a collection of essays that offers new dimen...
Christopher Woolgar, “The Culture of Food in England, 1200-1500” (Yale UP, 2016)
30 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Food was central to the lives of people in England during the Middle Ages in ways different than it is today. As Christopher Woolgar reveals in his bo...
Amy Wright, “Cracker Sonnets” (BrickRoad Poetry Press, 2016)
18 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
My grandmother, who’s now ninety-eight, lived most of her life in a little town in Southwestern Ohio called Waynesville. The town has reinvented its...
Marta Zaraska, “Meathooked: The History and Science of our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat” (Basic Books, 2016)
05 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Here in the U.S. we’ve just celebrated the Fourth of July, with its parades, fireworks, and, of course, cook-outs. If you’re like me, the smell of...
Sarah Wald, “The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl” (U. of Washington Press, 2016)
28 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The California farmlands have long served as a popular symbol of America’s natural abundance and endless opportunity. Yet, from John Steinbeck’s T...
Garrett M. Broad, “More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change” (U of California Press, 2016)
13 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Resistance to the industrial food system has, over the past decades, led to the rise of alternative food movements. Debate about genetically modified ...
Roger Horowitz, “Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food” (Columbia UP, 2016)
21 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food (Columbia University Press, 2016), Roger Horowitz, director of the Center for the...
Jeff Koehler, “Darjeeling” (Bloomsbury, 2015)
31 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Darjeeling tea, like other members of its artisanal tribe serrano peppers, Champagne, and grana padano,exists through a combination of intimate unders...
Sarah Bowen, “Divided Spirits: Tequila, Mezcal, and the Politics of Production” (U of California Press, 2015)
06 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Divided Spirits: Tequila, Mezcal, and the Politics of Production (University of California Press, 2015), Sarah Bowen presents the cha...
Cindy R. Lobel, “Urban Appetites: Food and Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York” (U of Chicago Press, 2014)
06 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
New York City’s growth, from colonial outpost to the center of the gastronomic world is artfully crafted by Cindy R. Lobel, Assistant Professor of H...
Jamie Koufman, “Dr. Koufman’s Acid Reflux Diet” (Katalitix, 2015)
03 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
I love this book, am using its recipes, and was thrilled to interview Dr. Koufman, an iconoclast who appears poised to torpedo a terribly wasteful and...
James A. Benn, “Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History” (U of Hawaii Press, 2015)
04 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
James A. Benn‘s new book is a history of tea as a religious and cultural commodity in China before it became a global commodity in the nineteenth ce...
Yael Raviv, “Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel” (University of Nebraska Press, 2015)
17 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the late nineteenth century, Jewish immigrants inspired by Zionism began to settle in Palestine. Their goal was not only to establish a politically...
Francesca Bray et al.,eds., “Rice: Global Networks and New Histories” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
14 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The new edited volume by Francesca Bray, Peter Coclanis, Edda Fields-Black and Dagmar Schafer is a wonderfully interdisciplinary global history of ric...
Ted Merwin, “Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli” (NYU Press, 2015)
14 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli (New York University Press, 2015), Ted Merwin, Associate Professor of Religion and Judai...
Anna L. Tsing, “The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins” (Princeton UP, 2015)
06 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Anna L. Tsing‘s new book is on my new (as of this post) list of Must-Read-Books-That-All-Humans-Who-Can-Read-Should-Read-And-That-Nonhumans-Should-F...
Matthew Gavin Frank, “The Mad Feast: An Ecstatic Tour through America’s Food” (Liveright, 2015)
29 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Let’s say you had a curiosity about, maybe even a hankering for, Indiana’s signature dessert, sugar cream pie. You might search for it and, on a t...
Tom Jackson, “Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again” (Bloomsbury, 2015)
19 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Jackson‘s Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again (Bloomsbury, 2015) is a completely engrossing look into the history...
Josh Kun, “To Live and Dine in L.A.: Menus and the Making of the Modern City” (Angel City Press, 2015)
02 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
This book is a ton of fun. To Live and Dine in L.A.: Menus and the Making of the Modern City (Angel City Press) taps the deep and colorful collection ...
Reid Mitenbuler, “Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America’s Whiskey” (Viking, 2015)
18 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Most of the year, when the weather lets us, my wife and I wind down on our front porch with a bourbon. We live out in the countryside and, for no part...
Tom Hertweck, “Food on Film” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014)
26 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Movies and television shows often include scenes of eating, either as a side activity of the actors or as an integralpart of a scene. University of Ne...
Eugene N. Anderson, “Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
15 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Eugene N. Anderson‘s new book offers an expansive history of food, environment, and their relationships in China. From prehistory through the Ming a...
Sarah Besky, “The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair-Trade Plantations in India” (U of California Press, 2014)
14 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In this wonderful ethnography of Darjeeling tea, Sarah Besky explores different attempts at bringing justice to plantation life in north east India. T...
Laura Silver, “Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food” (Brandeis University Press, 2014)
26 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Something nice and filling for you here! Laura Silver‘s book Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food (Brandeis University Press, 2014) concerns i...
Leona Rittner, W. Scott Haine, and Jeffrey H. Jackson, eds. “The Thinking Space” (Ashgate, 2013)
27 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Believe it or not, the origins of this podcast and the entire New Books Network can be traced to a conversation I had in a cafein Ann Arbor, Michigan ...
Allen Salkin “From Scratch: Inside the Food Network” (Putnam, 2013)
05 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
When I was growing up the only cooking show on TV I remember was Julia Child. I sometimes watched “The French Chef,” not so much to learn anything...
Marlene Zuk, “Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live” (Norton, 2013)
22 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The Hebrews called it “Eden.” The Greeks and Romans called it the “Golden Age.” The philosophes–or Rousseau at least–called it the “Stat...
E. C. Spary, “Eating the Enlightenment: Food and the Sciences in Paris, 1670-1760” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
18 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
By focusing on food and eating from the dinner table to the laboratory, E. C. Spary‘s new book shows how an increasingly public culture of knowledge...
Barak Kushner, “Slurp!: A Social and Culinary History of Ramen – Japan’s Favorite Noodle Soup” (Global Oriental, 2012)
20 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
I bet you’ve never heard of the “Smash the Baltic Fleet Memorial Togo Marshmallow.” I hadn’t either, before reading Barak Kushner‘s lively a...
Signe Rousseau, “Food and Social Media: You Are What You Tweet” (AltaMira Press, 2012)
13 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
The other day I found myself in a cooking situation that’s fairly common: I had a few odd ingredients–some oxidized strips of bacon, a withered re...
William Kerrigan, “Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard: A Cultural History” (Johns Hopkins, 2012)
18 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Not many of us, not even the most ardent foodies, think of the crab apple as a fruit worth eating, much less extolling, but Henry David Thoreau saw so...
Bob Spitz, “Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child” (Knopf, 2012)
14 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
I confess I knew nothing about Julia Child prior to reading Bob Spitz‘s new book. And yet, from the dramatic opening passages through its 500+ pages...
Catherine Higgs, “Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa” (Ohio University Press, 2012)
14 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
With elegant and accessible prose, Catherine Higgs takes us on a journey in Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa (Ohio University Pr...
John S. Allen, “The Omnivorous Mind: Our Evolving Relationship to Food” (Harvard University Press, 2012)
23 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Did Proust have it right? Does food, whether it’s a madeleine from an aristocratic childhood or the Velveeta mac-and-cheese my mom used to make, hav...
Andrew P. Haley, "Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920" (UNC Press, 2011)
07 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Restaurants almost feel indigenous to American landscape, whether you're weaving past them by the thousands when you're driving through a metropolis o...
Roel Sterckx, “Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China” (Cambridge UP, 2011)
11 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Roel Sterckx‘s book Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China (Cambridge University Press, 2011) had me at drunken seances. (Drunken seances! Do...
Merry White, “Coffee Life in Japan” (University of California Press, 2012)
15 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Merry (Corky) White‘s new book Coffee Life in Japan (University of California Press, 2012) opens with a memory of stripping naked and being painted ...
Orla Ryan, “Chocolate Nations: Living and Dying for Cocoa in West Africa” (Zed Books, 2011)
27 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
When was the last time you ate some chocolate? If you live in the developed world there’s a strong chance that you’ve been munching on some fairly...
Cecilia Leong-Salobir, “Food Culture in Colonial Asia: A Taste of Empire” (Routledge, 2011)
13 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Hobson-Jobson was not just about administration and geopolitics- the language of Empire extended to its culinary endeavours as well. Thus chota hazri,...
Eric Rath, “Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan” (University of California Press, 2010)
04 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Cuisine in early modern Japan was experienced and negotiated through literature and ritual, and the uneaten or inedible was often as important as what...
Danyelle Freeman, “Try This: Traveling the Globe without Leaving the Table” (Ecco, 2011)
14 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Danyelle Freeman, better known as “Restaurant Girl” and a judge on Top Chef Masters, is single. But if you are considering asking out the petite a...