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James Giesen, James C Giesen, James C. Giesen, James C. (James C. Giesen Giesen, James C. Simon Giesen, Bryant Simon...
Food and Eating in America - A Documentary Reader
English · Hardback
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Description
Guides students through a rich menu of American history through food and eating
This book features a wide and diverse range of primary sources covering the cultivation, preparation, marketing, and consumption of food from the time before Europeans arrived in North America to the present-day United States. It is organized around what the authors label the "Four P's"--production, politics, price, and preference--in order to show readers that food represents something more than nutrition and the daily meals that keep us alive. The documents in this book demonstrate that food we eat is a "highly condensed social fact" that both reflects and is shaped by politics, economics, culture, religion, region, race, class, and gender.
Food and Eating in America covers more than 500 years of American food and eating history with sections on: An Appetizer: What Food and Eating Tell Us About America; Hunting, Harvesting, Starving, and the Occasional Feast: Food in Early America; Fields and Foods in the Nineteenth Century; Feeding a Modern World: Revolutions in Farming, Food, and Famine; and Counterculture Cuisines and Culinary Tourism.
* Presents primary sources from a wide variety of perspectives--Native Americans, explorers, public officials, generals, soldiers, slaves, slaveholders, clergy, businessmen, workers, immigrants, activists, African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, artists, writers, investigative reporters, judges, the owners of food trucks, and prison inmates
* Illustrates the importance of eating and food through speeches, letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles, illustrations, photographs, song lyrics, advertisements, legislative statutes, court rulings, interviews, manifestoes, government reports, and recipes
* Offers a new way of exploring how people lived in the past by looking closely and imaginatively at food
Food and Eating in America: A Documentary Reader is an ideal book for students of United States history, food, and the social sciences. It will also appeal to foodies and those with a curiosity for documentary-style books of all kinds.
List of contents
Series Editors' Preface xii
Part I: An Appetizer: What Food and Eating Tell Us About America 1
Part II: Hunting, Harvesting, Starving, and the Occasional Feast: Food in Early America 9
Chapter 1 Food in the New World: Pre-Columbian Era through the American Revolution 11
Document 1.1: The Cherokee Creation Story, "How the World Was Made, Wahnenauhi Version" 11
Document 1.2: John Smith's History of the Starving Times at Jamestown Colony (1609) 13
Document 1.3: English Artist John White's drawings of Native Americans fishing, cooking, and preparing corn (1580s) 15
Document 1.4: Edward Winslow on the "First" Thanksgiving, 1621 18
Document 1.5: A Micmac Perspective on Europeans' Way of Life, near Quebec (c. 1677) 21
Document 1.6: John Winthrop, Jr., Report to the Royal Society of London on Indian Corn (1662) 23
Document 1.7: Observations on American Vegetables Versus English Vegetables, from John Josselyn, New-England's Rarities Discovered (1672), and Francis Higginson, New-England's Plantation (1630) 25
Document 1.8: A Soldier's Perspective on the Revolutionary War, Selections from the Memoir of Private Joseph Plumb Martin (1777) 27
Document 1.9: A General's Perspective: A Letter from General Horatio Gates to Major General Caswell (August 3, 1780) 30
Document 1.10: Selections from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791) on Communal Eating and Vegetarianism 31
Chapter 2 Food, Foodways, and Conflict in the Early Republic 34
Document 2.1: Amelia Simmons, American Cookery (1796), "Preface," and Selected Recipes 34
Document 2.2: The Preface, Introduction, and Assorted Recipes from Mary Randolph, The Virginia House-Wife (1824) 36
Document 2.3: Unidentified artist, Benjamin Hawkins and the Creek Indians (Painting, c. 1805) 41
Document 2.4: John Lewis Krimmel, The Quilting Frolic (Painting, 1813) 42
Document 2.5: Excerpt from Joseph Doddridge, Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia (1824), Chapter 5, "Beasts and Birds" 44
Document 2.6: Selections from English Phrenologist George Combe, Notes on the United States During a Phrenological Visit in 1838-9-40, vol. II. (1841) 45
Document 2.7: A Variation of the Lyrics of "Home Sweet Home," a Popular Song of the Early Republic (c. 1830) 47
Part III: Fields and Foods in the Nineteenth Century 49
Chapter 3 Slavery and Food in the Old South 51
Document 3.1: Selections from Frederick Douglass, Memoirs on Food and Slavery (1845) 51
Document 3.2: Excerpts from Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) on Slaves' Weekly Rations, Punishments for Slaves' Stealing Food from Master, and Slave Taste Testers for Master 55
Document 3.3: Images of the Antebellum South 56
Document 3.4: Excerpts from Daniel R. A. C. Hundley, Social Relations in Our Southern States (1860) 59
Document 3.5: Selections from Planter James Battle Avirett, The Old Plantation: How We Lived in Great House and Cabin Before the War (1901) 62
Document 3.6: Excerpts from William H. Robinson, From Log Cabin to the Pulpit, or Fifteen Years in Slavery (1913) 65
Document 3.7: Excerpts from Allen Parker, Recollections of Slavery Times (1895) 67
Chapter 4 Agriculture and Food in the Age of Reform 70
Document 4.1: Advice on Farm Management, from The New England Farmer and Horticultural Journal (1828) 70
Document 4.2: Selections from Medicus, The Oracle of Health and Long Life Containing Plain and Practical Instructions for the Preservation of Sound Health (1837) 72
Document 4.3: Selections from Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewi
About the author
James C. Giesen is a history professor at Mississippi State University, and serves as the executive secretary of the Agricultural History Society and editor of the University of Georgia Press series, Environmental History and the American South.
Bryant Simon is a professor of history at Temple University and the author of four books and two edited collections, including most recently, Food, Power, and Agency (with Juergen Martschukat), and The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives.
Summary
Guides students through a rich menu of American history through food and eating
This book features a wide and diverse range of primary sources covering the cultivation, preparation, marketing, and consumption of food from the time before Europeans arrived in North America to the present-day United States. It is organized around what the authors label the "Four P's"--production, politics, price, and preference--in order to show readers that food represents something more than nutrition and the daily meals that keep us alive. The documents in this book demonstrate that food we eat is a "highly condensed social fact" that both reflects and is shaped by politics, economics, culture, religion, region, race, class, and gender.
Food and Eating in America covers more than 500 years of American food and eating history with sections on: An Appetizer: What Food and Eating Tell Us About America; Hunting, Harvesting, Starving, and the Occasional Feast: Food in Early America; Fields and Foods in the Nineteenth Century; Feeding a Modern World: Revolutions in Farming, Food, and Famine; and Counterculture Cuisines and Culinary Tourism.
* Presents primary sources from a wide variety of perspectives--Native Americans, explorers, public officials, generals, soldiers, slaves, slaveholders, clergy, businessmen, workers, immigrants, activists, African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, artists, writers, investigative reporters, judges, the owners of food trucks, and prison inmates
* Illustrates the importance of eating and food through speeches, letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles, illustrations, photographs, song lyrics, advertisements, legislative statutes, court rulings, interviews, manifestoes, government reports, and recipes
* Offers a new way of exploring how people lived in the past by looking closely and imaginatively at food
Food and Eating in America: A Documentary Reader is an ideal book for students of United States history, food, and the social sciences. It will also appeal to foodies and those with a curiosity for documentary-style books of all kinds.
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