New Books in Food

Before the craft beer revolution, Coors was a hot commodity. Impossible to find outside a few states in the West, the beer had a level of "cool" that only comes from scarcity. However, this veneer of desirability masked all manner of unfair and discriminatory labor practices within the Coors Brewing Company itself.  In Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American...

The tomato gets no respect. Never has. Stored in the dustbin of history for centuries, accused of being vile and poisonous, appropriated as wartime propaganda, subjected to being picked hard-green and gassed, even used as a projectile, the poor tomato is the Rodney Dangerfield of foods. Yet, the tomato is the most popular vegetable in America (and, in fact, the world). It holds a place in America'...

Animal lovers who feed meat to other animals are faced with a paradox: perhaps fewer animals would be harmed if they stopped feeding the ones they love. Animal diets do not raise problems merely for individuals. To address environmental crises, health threats, and harm to animals, we must change our food systems and practices. And in these systems, animals, too, are eaters. Moving beyond what huma...

In the 1960s and 1970s, the exposure of Big Tobacco’s aggressive lobbying and internal efforts to obscure science showcasing the harmful effects of smoking changed U.S. public opinion of the industry and of product safety protocols, both of which had largely obscured these harms from public view for decades. Public awareness grew, triggering regulation on disclosure related to political influencin...

We live in a time of food paradox. In a world of historically unprecedented abundance, many don’t have enough to eat. Life-limiting obesity coexists with malnutrition - at the same time, sometimes in the very same place. Food is the complex and critical subject that we will talk about today with Joseph Gitler who works to address the issue at a local, concrete level. He feeds the hungry. Back in 2...

Mămăligă, maize porridge or polenta, is a universally consumed dish in Romania and a prominent national symbol. But its unusual history has rarely been told. Alex Drace-Francis surveys the arrival and spread of maize cultivation in Romanian lands from Ottoman times to the eve of the First World War, and also the image of mămăligă in art and popular culture. In The Making of Mămăligă: Transimperial...

In Weeds and the Carolingians: Empire, Culture, and Nature in Frankish Europe, AD 750–900 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Paolo Squatriti asks: Why did weeds matter in the Carolingian empire? What was their special significance for writers in eighth- and ninth-century Europe and how was this connected with the growth of real weeds? In early medieval Europe, unwanted plants that persistentl...

The twelve chapters of Moral Foods: The Construction of Nutrition and Health in Modern Asia (U Hawai’i Press, 2020) are divided into three sections: Good Foods, Bad Foods, and Moral Foods. Using case studies from nineteenth- and twentieth-century China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, and Malaysia, these chapters investigate the moralization of food in modern Asia. These studies on moral food regi...

This is part 2 of a 2-part series from Cited - the predecessor of Darts and Letters. For the final episode of our “Activism & Academia”-themed week of programming, we’re returning to Cited’s series on genetically modified corn, Indigenous rights, and environmental law in Mexico. Return with us to our story on how the discovery of genetically modified corn in the Mexican highlands resulted in a rev...

This is part 1 of a 2-part series from Cited - the predecessor of Darts and Letters. When genetically modified corn was found in the highlands of Mexico, Indigenous campesino groups took to the streets to protect their cultural heritage, setting off a 20-year legal saga. The battle brought Indigenous rights, scientific methods, academic freedom, and law and trade into the mix. It’s a fascinating a...

What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make (Princeton University Press, 2022) by Dr. Michael Hathaway pushes today’s mushroom renaissance in compelling new directions. For centuries, Western science has promoted a human- and animal-centric framework of what counts as action, agency, movement, and behavior. But, as Michael Hathaway shows, the world-making capacities of mushrooms...

Tara Nurin explores women in all aspects of the brewing industry in A Women's Place is in the Brewhouse (Chicago Review Press, 2021). Women have brewed beer throughout most of human history. Their role as family and village brewer lasted for hundreds of thousands of years--through the earliest days of Mesopotamian civilization, the reign of Cleopatra, the witch trials of Medieval and Renaissance E...

Christopher Craig’s Middlemen of Modernity: Local Elites and Agricultural Development in Meiji Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2022) is a thoroughly research and engaging study of the role of local elites in the modernization of the Japanese countryside in the prewar era. “Agriculture,” Craig’s writes, “is given short shrift in the story of Japanese modernity. Farming and modernization seem to exist at opp...

Today I talked to Jin Feng of Grinnell College about her fascinating book Tasting Paradise on Earth: Jiangnan Foodways (U Washington Press, 2019). Preparing and consuming food is an integral part of identity formation, which in contemporary China embodies tension between fast-forward modernization and cultural nostalgia. Jin Feng's wide-ranging exploration of cities in the Lower Yangzi Delta--or J...

Kelsi Matwick and Keri Matwick's book Food Discourse of Celebrity Chefs of Food Network (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019) explores a fascinating, yet virtually unexplored research area: the language of food used on television cooking shows. It shows how the discourse of television cooking shows on the American television channel Food Network conveys a pseudo-relationship between the celebrity chef host a...

Understanding and explaining societal rules surrounding food and foodways have been the foci of anthropological studies since the early days of the discipline. Baking, Bourbon, and Black Drink: Foodways Archaeology in the American Southeast (U Alabama Press, 2018), however, is the first collection devoted exclusively to southeastern foodways analyzed through archaeological perspectives. These essa...

Veronika Mak’s Milk Craze: Body, Science, and Hope in China (U of Hawaii Press, 2021) mixes historical and ethnographic research on milk to understand the morality politics of class, labor, and identity in modern Hong Kong and the Shunde area of Guangdong. Beginning with the historical “milkscapes” of ancient China, Mak’s book explores the influence of British colonization on dairy culture in Hong...

The story of DDT as you’ve never heard it before: a fresh look at the much-maligned chemical compound as a cautionary tale of how powerful corporations have stoked the flames of science denialism for their own benefit In the 1940s, DDT helped the Allies win the Second World War by wiping out the insects that caused malaria, with seemingly no ill effects on humans. After the war, it was sprayed wil...

Ella Hawkins talks about the biscuits she makes, inspired by her research on Elizabethan dress, and on everything from William Morris wallpapers to TV shows like Outlander and Game of Thrones. She also talks about her upcoming monograph, titled Shakespeare in Elizabethan Costume: ‘Period Dress’ in Twenty-First-Century Performance (forthcomin from Bloomsbury), which examines how early modern garmen...

From grasshoppers to grubs, an eye-opening look at insect cuisine around the world. An estimated two billion people worldwide regularly consume insects, yet bugs are rarely eaten in the West. Why are some disgusted at the thought of eating insects while others find them delicious? Edible Insects: A Global History (Reaktion Books, 2021) provides a broad introduction to the role of insects as human...

The three protagonists of Pasta, Pizza and Propaganda: A Political History of Italian Food TV (Intellect, 2022) are food, television and politics. These are the three main characters that interrelate, collaborate and fight behind the scenes, while in front of the camera the writers, intellectuals and celebrity chefs talk about, prepare or taste the best Italian dishes. In Pasta, Pizza and Propagan...

Image by image and hashtag by hashtag, Instagram has redefined the ways we relate to food. Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish edit contributions that explore the massively popular social media platform as a space for self-identification, influence, transformation, and resistance. Artists and journalists join a wide range of scholars to look at food’s connection to Instagram from vantage points as...

Dr. Nora Rubel is the Jane and Alan Batkin Professor of Jewish Studies and Chair of the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester in New York. Dr. Ben Zeller is associate professor of religion at Lake Forest College in Illinois. They are co-editors of the book Religion, Food, and Eating in North America from Columbia University Press (2014).  Learn more about your ad choic...

In 1951, Doña Natalia Barraza opened the Nayarit, a Mexican restaurant in Echo Park, Los Angeles. With A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community (U California Press, 2022), historian Natalia Molina traces the life's work of her grandmother, remembered by all who knew her as Doña Natalia--a generous, reserved, and extraordinarily capable woman. Doña Natalia immigrated a...

Eric Ripert is chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin on 7th Avenue in Manhattan’s Theater District, author of the autobiography 32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line from Random House, numerous cookbooks, and host of the television series AVEC Eric. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.suppo...