HIST 89.001: Global Food History: Books

This Dartmouth Medal-winning 3-volume set presents 600 articles on food and its place in human culture and society, covering everything from agronomy to zucchini. Students, academics and general researchers will find entries on everything from food preparation, distribution and storage to holidays and festivals, nutrition and health, and cultures and cuisines. The Encyclopedias multidisciplinary articles -- including: Comfort Food, Ethnicity and Food, Medieval Banquets and Nutrient Composition -- range from 250 to 10, 000 words each and are supplemented by 450 photographs and illustrations, sidebars, recipes, menus, timelines and a comprehensive index.

"the best food reference work ever to appear in the English language ... read it and be dazzled"Bee Wilson, New StatesmanFirst published in 1999, the ground-breaking Oxford Companion to Food was an immediate success and won prizes and accolades around the world. Its blend of serious food history, culinary expertise, and entertaining serendipity, was and remains unique.Interest in food, cooking, and the culture surrounding food has grown enormously in the intervening period, as has the study of food and food history. University departments, international societies, and academic journals have sprung up dedicated to exploring the meaning of food in the daily livesof people around the world, alongside an ever-increasing number of articles, books, programmes, and websites in the general media devoted to the discussion of food, making the Oxford Companion to Food more relevant than ever.Already a food writing classic, this Companion combines an exhaustive catalogue of foods, be they biscuits named after battles, divas or revolutionaries; body parts (from nose to tail, toe to cerebellum); or breads from the steppes of Asia or the well-built ovens of the Mediterranean; with a richlyallusive commentary on the culture of food, expressed in literature and cookery books, or as dishes peculiar to a country or community.While building on the Companion's existing strengths, Tom Jaine has taken the opportunity to update the text and alert readers to new perspectives in food studies. There is new coverage of attitudes to food consumption, production and perception, such as food and genetics, food and sociology, andobesity. New entries include terms such as convenience foods, drugs and food, Ethiopia, leftovers, medicine and food, pasta, and many more. There are also new entries on important personalities who are of special significance within the world of food, among them Clarence Birdseye, Henri Nestle, andLouis Pasteur.In its new edition the Companion maintains its place as the foremost food reference resource for study and home use.

Cuisine and Culture presents a multicultural and multiethnic approach that draws connections between major historical events and how and why these events affected and defined the culinary traditions of different societies. Witty and engaging, Civitello shows how history has shaped our diet--and how food has affected history. Prehistoric societies are explored all the way to present day issues such as genetically modified foods and the rise of celebrity chefs. Civitello's humorous tone and deep knowledge are the perfect antidote to the usual scholarly and academic treatment of this universally important subject.

Rachel Laudan tells the remarkable story of the rise and fall of the world's great cuisines--from the mastery of grain cooking some twenty thousand years ago, to the present--in this superbly researched book. Probing beneath the apparent confusion of dozens of cuisines to reveal the underlying simplicity of the culinary family tree, she shows how periodic seismic shifts in "culinary philosophy"--beliefs about health, the economy, politics, society and the gods--prompted the construction of new cuisines, a handful of which, chosen as the cuisines of empires, came to dominate the globe. Cuisine and Empire shows how merchants, missionaries, and the military took cuisines over mountains, oceans, deserts, and across political frontiers. Laudan's innovative narrative treats cuisine, like language, clothing, or architecture, as something constructed by humans. By emphasizing how cooking turns farm products into food and by taking the globe rather than the nation as the stage, she challenges the agrarian, romantic, and nationalistic myths that underlie the contemporary food movement.  

We are what we eat: this aphorism contains a profound truth about civilization, one that has played out on the world historical stage over many millennia of human endeavor. Using the colorful diaries of a sixteenth-century merchant as a narrative guide, Empires of Food vividly chronicles the fate of people and societies for the past twelve thousand years through the foods they grew, hunted, traded, and ate--and gives us fascinating, and devastating, insights into what to expect in years to come. In energetic prose, agricultural expert Evan D. G. Fraser and journalist Andrew Rimas tell gripping stories that capture the flavor of places as disparate as ancient Mesopotamia and imperial Britain, taking us from the first city in the once-thriving Fertile Crescent to today's overworked breadbaskets and rice bowls in the United States and China, showing just what food has meant to humanity. Cities, culture, art, government, and religion are founded on the creation and exchange of food surpluses, complex societies built by shipping corn and wheat and rice up rivers and into the stewpots of history's generations. But eventually, inevitably, the crops fail, the fields erode, or the temperature drops, and the center of power shifts. Cultures descend into dark ages of poverty, famine, and war. It happened at the end of the Roman Empire, when slave plantations overworked Europe's and Egypt's soil and drained its vigor. It happened to the Mayans, who abandoned their great cities during centuries of drought. It happened in the fourteenth century, when medieval societies crashed in famine and plague, and again in the nineteenth century, when catastrophic colonial schemes plunged half the world into a poverty from which it has never recovered. And today, even though we live in an age of astounding agricultural productivity and genetically modified crops, our food supplies are once again in peril. Empires of Food brilliantly recounts the history of cyclic consumption, but it is also the story of the future; of, for example, how a shrimp boat hauling up an empty net in the Mekong Delta could spark a riot in the Caribbean. It tells what happens when a culture or nation runs out of food--and shows us the face of the world turned hungry. The authors argue that neither local food movements nor free market economists will stave off the next crash, and they propose their own solutions. A fascinating, fresh history told through the prism of the dining table, Empires of Food offers a grand scope and a provocative analysis of the world today, indispensable in this time of global warming and food crises.

Written with the needs of students in mind, Foods That Changed History: How Foods Shaped Civilization from the Ancient World to the Present presents nearly 100 entries on foods that have shaped history--fascinating topics that are rarely addressed in detail in traditional history texts. In learning about foods and their importance, readers will gain valuable insight into other areas such as religious movements, literature, economics, technology, and the human condition itself. Readers will learn how the potato, for example, changed lives in drastic ways in northern Europe, particularly Ireland; and how the potato famine led to the foundation of the science of plant pathology, which now affects how scientists and governments consider the dangers of genetic uniformity. The entries document how the consumption of tea and spices fostered global exploration, and how citrus fruits led to the prevention of scurvy. This book helps students acquire fundamental information about the role of foods in shaping world history, and it promotes critical thinking about that topic.

Street foods run deep throughout human history and show the movements of peoples and their foods across the globe. For example, mandoo, manti, momo, and bāozi: all of these types of dumplings originated in Central Asia and spread across the Old World beginning in the 12th century. This encyclopedia surveys common street foods in about 100 countries and regions of the world, clearly depicting how "fast foods of the common people" fit into a country or a region's environments, cultural history, and economy. The entries provide engaging information about specific foods as well as coverage of vendor and food stall culture and issues. An appendix of recipes allows for hands-on learning and provides opportunities for readers to taste international street foods at home.