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"There is no better introduction to the current vigorous state of food history, no better defense of its interest and intellectual legitimacy, and no better demonstration of how odd it is that the subject needs a defense."—Steven Shapin, Franklin L. Ford Research Professor, History of Science, Harvard University
"This book is a treasure. Its clear and lively chapters on global food history instantly explain why food has become an essential entry point into the most intellectually challenging problems of our time. Any reader interested in the role of food in history, culture, or politics, the production or consumption of food, or the teaching of critical thinking will find this book hard to put down."—Marion Nestle, Professor, New York University, and author of Food Politics
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Preface
Paul Freedman
Introduction: Food History as a Field
Warren Belasco
Part One: Regional Histories
1. Premodern Europe
Ken Albala
2. China
E.{ths}N. Anderson
3. India
Jayanta Sengupta
4. Out of Africa: A Brief Guide to African Food History
Jessica B. Harris
5. Middle Eastern Food History
Charles Perry
6. Latin American Food between Export Liberalism and the Via Campesina
Jeffrey M. Pilcher
7. Food and the Material Origins of Early America
Joyce E. Chaplin
8. Food in Recent U.S. History
Amy Bentley and Hi’ilei Hobart
9. Influence, Sources, and African Diaspora Foodways
Frederick Douglass Opie
10. Migration, Transnational Cuisines, and Invisible Ethnics
Krishnendu Ray
Part Two: Cuisine
11. The French Invention of Modern Cuisine
Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson
12. Restaurants
Paul Freedman
13. Cookbooks as Resources for Social History
Barbara Ketcham Wheaton
Part Three: Problems
14. The Revolt against Homogeneity
Amy B. Trubek
15. Food and Popular Culture
Fabio Parasecoli
16. Post-1945 Global Food Developments
Peter Scholliers
List of Contributors
Index
About the author
Paul Freedman is the Chester D. Tripp Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination and editor of Food: The History of Taste.
Joyce E. Chaplin is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University. Her publications include Round about the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit and Benjamin Franklin’s Political Arithmetic: A Materialist View of Humanity.
Ken Albala is Professor of History at the University of the Pacific. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Eating Right in the Renaissance; Beans: A History; The Banquet; and The Lost Art of Real Cooking.
Summary
Food and cuisine are important subjects for historians across many areas of study. Food, after all, is one of the most basic human needs and a foundational part of social and cultural histories. This book delivers an unprecedented review of the state of historical research on food, endorsed by the American Historical Association.
Additional text
"Any remaining doubts about the legitimacy of food history are put to rest by this edited volume."
