Book Description
The story of American eating begins and ends with the fact that American food, by most of the world's standards, is not very good. This is a rather sad note considering the "land of plenty" the first American settlers found, and even sadder considering that with the vast knowledge of food we possess, we have still managed to create things such as the TV dinner and "Finger Lickin' Good" chicken. Nevertheless, America's eating habits, the philosophy behind these habits, and much of the food itself are deliciously fascinating. Waverly Root and Richard de Rochemont, in a style that is rich, tasty, and ironic, chronicle the history of American food and eating customs from the time of the earliest explorers to the present. In writing this chronicle on American food, Root and de Rochemont have in fact created a fresh and commanding history of the United States itself. Eating in America is an erudite, sumptuous, witty, marvelously readable study; truly a book to feast on time and again.
Customer Reviews:
Must Have Reference Book.......2000-10-06
I cannot emphasize what an incredible book this is. I have owned three copies: given one as a present, and have kept two (I couldn't find one when I wanted to re-read it, so had to purchase another). I am very pleased to see that this is still in print after 20 years.
If you are interested in how we, as Americans, have inherited our fondness for sweets; or ever wondered why the Pilgrims almost starved, but the Indians didn't; or the fascinating history of refrigerated shipping of foodstuffs, such as bringing lobster from Maine to the midwest during the 19th century; or the background of Heinz, Kellogg, Graham (Crackers) and other 21st century household names; or the unbelievable decadent dinners served during the Gilded Age in the 1890's, like the one that was only for the pet dogs of the rich. This book is a fabulous source book and entertaining history of American taste (and lack of). Highly recommended. A+++
Waverly Root was a journalist and lived as an ex-pat between the wars in Paris. He did NOT hang out with Stein, Hemmingway, or the other more well known types and wrote a rather amusing autobiography which is no longer in print. However, when he retired from journalism, he began a new career as a food writer. Another book that you may enjoy is FOOD, a dictionary. I haven't checked to see if this too is Out of Print, but it is an incredible collection of short descriptions of what we eat. One of my favorites is the tomato, which even up to this century was considered poisonous in many households.
Gripping Stuff!
Book Description
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.
Customer Reviews:
Great Book.......2007-06-29
I had to read this for my class, but it is a very interesting. If you are into the history of the American diet I would highly recommend this book.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent historical novel.......2007-07-23
The author has put together from varying pieces of history the story of a true mountain man whose legend is grown to larger than life. The early west was a brutal and harsh environment, not the romantic scenes that are painted in most novels. This is a good glimpse into the reality of the time and the people who shaped the country as we know it today.
Definitely not the movie...but still a good read........2006-10-27
If you've watched "Jeremiah Johnson" and enjoyed it, then you should take some time and read the book that spawned the movie. But be forewarned, the movie takes a few liberties here and there and if (that's a big if) the book is generally true, then the chronology of many things in the movie aren't correct. You could say that the movie is like a radio-friendly death metal song...a little missing here and there but you get the overall picture. I loved the movie and I admit the authors of the book seem to stretch the truth a little, but it's still a good read. I can only laugh at the politically incorrect accusations made in other reviews. Things were a lot different back then on both sides of the fence and I really don't think many mountain men nor American Indians went around feeling warm and fuzzy about their fair and balanced treatment of all of mankind. In fact, if you read other historical accounts of this period, you will find that the relationship between trapper and most American Indian tribes was most likely more honorable than the realtionship that the tribes would have with Indian agents, missionaries, and other traders (look up germ warfare). In fact, Christian missionaries were more deadly to the tribes and their culture than many of the so-called politically incorrect mountain men. The big-screen version of Johnson would most likely cower if he met the book version of Johnson. Overall, a good read.
Mountain man.......2006-03-19
I was amazed with the story of this man. Thorp was careful to research the book, but this resulted in a dry read. The book "Mountain Man" was a much more interesting read but did not reveal the true nature of Johnson. Thorp did. I have lived in these mountains and plains for 40 years and that made the book very interesting. I have been to many of the places in the book. Worth reading.
It ain't the movie.......2005-08-09
This is an unusual book with lots of interesting stories but probably requires a specialty audience. The writing style is very different from your standard novel. It is a collection of stories taken down from people who were with John Johnson and then arranged basically in as cronological an order as possible or arranged by topic. For someone who is mountainman buff or is otherwise familiar with the historic time period, it is a great insight into the life and hardships of these men and women. One of the characteristics of many westerners was the art of understatement and that shows up in the retelling of these stories and so reading between the lines is helpful. As a history teacher, I enjoyed the book. If you are looking for a romantic extention of the movie "Jeramiah Johnson," this ain't it.
Jeremiah Johnson was a wimp!.......2005-08-02
The movie "Jeremiah Johnson" found some of its inspiration and history in the true life adventures of John "Liver-Eatin'" Johnston. As tough as Jeremiah was, he can barely hold a candle to the tough mountain man who ate the livers of his vanquished foes.
The feats of survival, tracking, and hunting boggle the mind. While the authors draw from oral history (and perhaps have been taken in with some broad embellishments), the remarkable vengeance Johnston extracts from the Crow tribe for the death of his wife and unborn child is staggering. The Crows, troubled by Johnston's relentless vengeance, dispatch 20 warriors on a mission to find and kill the tribe's nemesis. Over a period that spanned over a decade the solitary Crows fall to Johnston. He killed them all.
This is not a book for the politically correct...the book originally appeared in the 1940s. Don't expect to confront descriptions of other races that include hyphens.
For those who have read the Dan O'Brien books, THE CONTRACT SURGEON and THE INDIAN AGENT, there is a reference to Valentine T. McGillycuddy. For fans of the HBO Original Series DEADWOOD, "Colorado" Charlie Utter warrants several mentions.
An interesting read for those who harbor any admiration for the real pioneers.
Book Description
Sugar, pork, beer, corn, cider, scrapple, and hoppin' John all became staples in the diet of colonial America. The ways Americans cultivated and prepared food and the values they attributed to it played an important role in shaping the identity of the newborn nation. In A Revolution in Eating, James E. McWilliams presents a colorful and spirited tour of culinary attitudes, tastes, and techniques throughout colonial America.
Confronted by strange new animals, plants, and landscapes, settlers in the colonies and West Indies found new ways to produce food. Integrating their British and European tastes with the demands and bounty of the rugged American environment, early Americans developed a range of regional cuisines. From the kitchen tables of typical Puritan families to Iroquois longhouses in the backcountry and slave kitchens on southern plantations, McWilliams portrays the grand variety and inventiveness that characterized colonial cuisine. As colonial America grew, so did its palate, as interactions among European settlers, Native Americans, and African slaves created new dishes and attitudes about food. McWilliams considers how Indian corn, once thought by the colonists as "fit for swine," became a fixture in the colonial diet. He also examines the ways in which African slaves influenced West Indian and American southern cuisine.
While a mania for all things British was a unifying feature of eighteenth-century cuisine, the colonies discovered a national beverage in domestically brewed beer, which came to symbolize solidarity and loyalty to the patriotic cause in the Revolutionary era. The beer and alcohol industry also instigated unprecedented trade among the colonies and further integrated colonial habits and tastes. Victory in the American Revolution initiated a "culinary declaration of independence," prompting the antimonarchical habits of simplicity, frugality, and frontier ruggedness to define American cuisine. McWilliams demonstrates that this was a shift not so much in new ingredients or cooking methods, as in the way Americans imbued food and cuisine with values that continue to shape American attitudes to this day.
Customer Reviews:
A Revolution In Eating.......2007-07-16
The colonization of the United States did not happen in one particular way by any particular set of individuals. In other words, the country we now call the United States is not the result of a single group of people coming to the Americas that thrived and grew to eventually become the individual states that we see today. Instead, this country was formed by several groups of individuals who came to America for different purposes. Some groups came to America as British colonists. Some came to found a strong strict religious colony. Others came to grow sugar cane. Others turned to making money growing tobacco. Still others came as slave labour abducted from Africa or pulled from the Native population.
With each of these groups came a different set of intensions and a different set of ideals. Some groups very strictly adhered to living and eating practices of their cultural heritage. Other groups adopted some or all of the foods, crops, and general eating practices of the Natives in the area.
A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America is a very interesting book. Not only does this book illustrate how food preferences of these groups of people varied dramatically according to their colonization purpose but it also gives the reader a deeper understanding of the American regional differences that continue through to modern day. Moreover, this book also looks at the different ways food was acquired and meals were prepared as well as the social practices of food sharing in these various regions.
The link between food and freedom. .......2006-06-28
McWilliams' book is fascinating and completely unexpected. I'd never given a thought to what explorers, settlers, slaves, and/or Native Americans ate beyond the traditional stuff of Thanksgiving. A Revolution in Eating starts with survival basics and takes you through New World regional "foodways" and drinking habits to a new undestanding of all sorts of familiar American traditions and beliefs about people, places, and things that turn out to be fundamental to our social, economic, and political independence as a nation. I couldn't put it down.
The New World according to food........2006-01-16
McWilliams' book is an exposition of how and why "traditional American" food as we know it today evolved in various places, and how and why these culinary evolutions in turn influenced historical movements.
We tend to take the task of gathering, planting, processing, and preserving food for granted in our 21st century lives; in truth, these are the most important tasks for our survival! McWilliams adeptly compared how culinary traditions evolved and developed distinct characters in New England, the Caribbeans, and everything in-between, depending on local resources and the people who lived in those areas. The latter part is determined by relations between the white settlers and the native Americans, and the West African slaves forcefully translated to the New World.
One fascinating aspect of the book is how closely the nature of work (or in many cases here, forced labor) and food are interconnected. Areas that grow sugar as a cash crop develop culinary traditions distinct from those that grow tobacco, and not only because of the obvious geographical difference. Social reality also had a strong interconnection to how food is cultivated or gathered.
McWilliams interspersed interesting re-examinations of the menu items that we take for granted today: How did smoked meats enter the American tradition? Why is Hoopin' John historically significant? What about the New England vegetable gardens come about?
Unfortunately, McWilliams tend to rely too much on including quotations of diary entries of people of the different eras. Rarely a page goes without any exultation of some random dairy farmer, or plantation operator, or inspector, or European visitor, on the "bountiful harvest of dis [sic] soiles [sic] .... " and "... are very resorrsful [sic] in gathering ... " After a while these quotations lose their charm and become bothersome and unnecessarily slows the pace of the main story.
Overall, this is an excellent and educational read. The subjects are well-researched and gives a fresh perspective of the "traditional" American cuisine as we know it today.
Book Description
As you walk out of your front door tomorrow morning, look down. Look to your left and to your right. Touch the earth: the concrete, the sidewalk, or whatever surrounds you. Undoubtedly you will be touching the layered coverings of the remains of indigenous peoples. Not arrowheads, not broken pieces of pottery — but the very DNA of the first peoples of this continent.
For five centuries — from Columbus's arrival in 1492 to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s, to the renewed assault in the 1970s — our continent's indigenous people endured the most massive and systematic act of genocide in the history of the world.
In Eating Fire, Tasting Blood, twenty established and up-and-coming American Indian writers from disparate nations and tribes offer stirring reflections on the history of their people. This is not a collection of essays about Native Americans but rather a collection BY Native Americans — the story of native holocaust on a tribe-by-tribe level as told by those few who have been fortunate enough to survive. Included are original essays by Vine Deloria Jr., Paula Gunn Allen, Linda Hogan, and Eduardo Galeano.
Customer Reviews:
Important book, despite the hit-piece against Ward Churchill.......2007-03-11
This book is important in many ways, as the other reviewers have described. I just wanted to mention that the article by David Seals titled "Nicaragua: What's Ward Churchill Got Against You?" was pretty pathetic. It included juvenile insults like calling Churchill "Lurch," which is the same crude name that right-wingers directed toward John Kerry.
No one knows all the details of Churchill's experiences in Nicaragua. But we can all learn many things from his books on FBI counter intelligence programs, the Native American holocaust, the horrible boarding schools Native kids were subjected to, current day ecocidal assaults from mining, timber and massive hydroelectric projects, and many other important topics.
Ward doesn't get it all right, Ward has "issues," - as we all do.
But Churchill has made many important contributions, including having the courage to speak some uncomfortable truths regarding the blowback of September 11.
Regarding the "scandal" over Ward's heritage, I'd just say even Europeans have tribal roots. Unlike Ward, most Europeans do not have a grandfather who is buried in a traditional Indian buriel ground (so, one could understand the roots of Ward's own assumptions about his ancestry). And unlike Ward, most of us have not spent countless hours writing, speaking and teaching about indigenous holocausts - past and present.
Seals' effort to degrade Churchill ultimately speaks more poorly of Seals himself.
In addition to this book, I'd recommend anything by Winona LaDuke and the DVD "Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action" produced by the Katahdin Foundation.
THE TRAIL STILL WALKED.......2006-09-15
To tell the story, the real story, who better then the current generation of Native American writers. With Marijo Moore as a contributor and editor of Eating Fire, Tasting Blood she has gathered the essays and poems of her peers to tell us what we were never told in school.
With specific references to tribal nations like the Conoy, that are gone but not forgotten and accounts of massacres like Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, these writers bring us up to date and put forth the message that there was a holocaust here too, it just gets no recognition in books or on film.
This anthology hopes to change all of that. With the details brought front and center there is no turning away from what was covered up, taken and not returned, and is still being perpetrated on the survivors. To balance these accounts Moore has included tales of children going back home to learn where they came from, and poems that tantalize the mind and make the spirit soar.
The accomplishment of bringing the likes of Paula Gunn Allen, Vine Deloria, Jr., and Eduardo Galeano in one volume is to say the least, incredible. Read it and learn about the trail, still being walked today.
just received the book.......2006-06-17
I just receieved this book the other day and I must say I am very impressed by it. The introduction by Marijo Moore says it all--what this book is about. " To eat the fire of truth is to taste the blood of our existence." Such a beautiful line. Also in this book are great stories and testimonies by Charles Eastman, Steve Russell, Vine Deloria Jr, Joseph Dandurand, also a fabulous poem by Marijo Moore herself "Atop Polacca on First Mesa."
Also some great pieces by Susan Shown Harjo, Linda Hogan, and a slew of other amazing writers.
With a great title and great chapter titles this book is a great follow up to GENOCIDE OF THE MIND. This book should be read in classrooms all across the U.S. It is a burning reminder that the Indian voice is still not heard, but we will continue to start the fires, and make your blood boil.
JW
Average customer rating:
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Tomatoes, Potatoes, Corn, and Beans: How the Foods of the Americas Changed Eating Arou
Sylvia A. Johnson
Manufacturer: Atheneum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
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| History & Historical Fiction
| Children's Books
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State & Local
| United States
| History & Historical Fiction
| Children's Books
| Subjects
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Fiction
| Health
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
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Personal Hygiene
| Health
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
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Cooking
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General
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Potatoes
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ASIN: 0689801416 |
Book Description
During the period of America's swiftest industrialization and urban growth, fire struck fear in the hearts of city dwellers as did no other calamity. Before the Civil War, sweeping blazes destroyed more than $200 million in property in the nation's largest cities. Between 1871 and 1906, conflagrations left Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, and San Francisco in ruins. Into the twentieth century, this dynamic hazard intensified as cities grew taller and more populous, confounding those who battled it. Firefighters' death-defying feats captured the popular imagination but too often failed to provide more than symbolic protection. Hundreds of fire insurance companies went bankrupt because they could not adequately deal with the effects of even smaller blazes.
Firefighters and fire insurers created a physical and cultural infrastructure whose legacy -- in the form of heroic firefighters, insurance policies, building standards, and fire hydrants -- lives on in the urban built environment. In Eating Smoke, Mark Tebeau shows how the changing practices of firefighters and fire insurers shaped the built landscape of American cities, the growth of municipal institutions, and the experience of urban life. Drawing on a wealth of fire department and insurance company archives, he contrasts the invention of a heroic culture of firefighters with the rational organizational strategies by fire underwriters. Recognizing the complexity of shifting urban environments and constantly experimenting with tools and tactics, firefighters fought fire ever more aggressively -- "eating smoke" when they ventured deep into burning buildings or when they scaled ladders to perform harrowing rescues. In sharp contrast to the manly valor of firefighters, insurers argued that the risk was quantifiable, measurable, and predictable. Underwriters managed hazard with statistics, maps, and trade associations, and they eventually agitated for building codes and other reforms, which cities throughout the nation implemented in the twentieth century. Although they remained icons of heroism, firefighters' cultural and institutional authority slowly diminished. Americans had begun to imagine fire risk as an economic abstraction.
By comparing the simple skills employed by firefighters -- climbing ladders and manipulating hoses -- with the mundane technologies -- maps and accounting charts -- of insurers, the author demonstrates that the daily routines of both groups were instrumental in making intense urban and industrial expansion a less precarious endeavor.
Average customer rating:
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Eating Landscape: Aztec and European Occupation of Tlalocan
Philip P. Arnold
Manufacturer: Univ Pr of Colorado
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Aztec
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| History
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General
| Ancient
| History
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General
| Americas
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| Anthropology
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Native American
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ASIN: 0870815180 |
Book Description
How do people meaningfully occupy the land? In sixteenth-century Mexico, Aztec and Spanish understandings of land formed the basis of their cultural identities. Their distinctive conceptions of land also established the traumatic character of cultural contact.
As Philip P. Arnold maintains in Eating Landscape, central to Aztec meanings of land were ceremonies to Tlaloc, god of rain, fertility, and earth. These ceremonies included child sacrifices for rain and corn, priestly auto-sacrifices at lakes, mountain veneration, and ancestor worship. What unifies these ceremonies, contends Arnold, is the Aztec understanding of food. By feeding deities of the land, human beings could eat. Seeing the valley of Mexico as Tlalocan (the place of Tlaloc) and characterizing it as an "eating landscape" illustrates an Aztec mode of occupying land.
At the same time, Arnold demonstrates that the very texts that open a window on Tlaloc ceremonies were created by Spanish missionaries. Particularly important was Sahagn's Florentine Codex, which--as was the case with the work of other ethnographers--was intended to destroy Aztec ceremonies by exposing them through writing. Using texts to reveal a pre-Columbian past, therefore, is problematic. Arnold therefore suggests an alternative reading of the texts with reference to the material environment of the Valley of Mexico.
By connecting ceremonies to specific water courses, mountains, plants, and animals, Arnold reveals a more encompassing picture of Aztec ceremonies, revealing the gap between indigenous and colonial understandings of land. Indigenous strategies of occupying land in Mexico focused on ceremonies which addressed the material conditions of life, while colonial strategies of occupying land centered around books and other written materials such as Biblical and classical texts, ethnographies, and legal documents. These distinctive ways of occupying Tlalocan, concludes Arnold, had dramatic consequences for the formation of the Americas.
Filling a gap in the coverage of Aztec cosmology, Eating Landscape brings hermeneutics to archaeology and linguistic analysis in new ways that will be of interest to historians of religion and archaeologists alike.
Books:
- Eating in Italy: A Traveler's Guide to the Hidden Gastronomic Pleasures of Northern Italy
- Everyday Food: Great Food Fast
- Everyday Pasta
- Everyday Pasta
- From the Earth: Chinese Vegetarian Cooking
- Haley's Hints
- Healthy Helpings: 800 Fast and Fabulous Recipes for the Kosher (or Not) Cook
- Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- Hot Rock Sax - Techniques, Licks And Effects
Books Index
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