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You probably think about your food in terms of nutrition, taste, cost, and availability all the time, but how much do you know about the history of the food you eat? Check out this list of staff-recommended nonfiction books about various foods, the people who discovered, created, and ate them, and how what we eat continues to change our civilization. Click a title to see it in our catalog, to place a hold for pickup, or to find electronic copies for download.
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Food city : four centuries of food-making in New York
by Joy Santlofer
A vibrant account of four centuries of food production in New York City traces the establishment of the first Dutch brewery through the growing metropolis' evolutions in farming, diverse culinary preparations and novelty treats, exploring how New York's food commerce and culture also influenced new developments in machinery, trade and transportation.
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Breakfast : a history
by Heather Arndt Anderson
Breakfast: A History tells the story of how breakfast came to be the most important meal of the day. From the humble Roman times of stale bread soaked in diluted wine, to the drive-through McMuffin boom of the 1970s, Breakfast takes the reader on a lively adventure through time, uncovering the real stories behind our favorite breakfast foods. Breakfast is not just the meal that gets us going in the morning, but a driving force in history— forever altering the lives of peasants and kings alike, inspiring great works of art, and even changing the way we build our homes.
Full of wry humor and captivating anecdotes, Breakfast is a treat for students of history, gastronomes, and anyone who's ever wondered where their waffles came from.
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Fifty foods that changed the course of history
by Bill Price
Examines how fifty foods have impacted human civilization, from the introduction of frozen foods to golden rice, a genetically modified food developed for the good of humanity
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The potlikker papers : a food history of the modern South
by John T Edge
Describes how the culinary traditions of the poor, rural South played a large part in the region's revitalization and renaissance, eventually becoming incorporated into the gentrification and artesian renaissance that gave rise to popular figures in Southern food, from Paul Prudhomme to Craig Claiborne.
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The Big Oyster : history on the half shell
by Mark Kurlansky
The best-selling author of Salt and Cod takes an insightful look at the influence of the oyster on four centuries of New York history, culture, economics, and culinary trends.
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Cod : a biography of the fish that changed the world
by Mark Kurlansky
A history of the fish that has led to wars, stirred revolutions, sustained economies and diets, and helped in the settlement of North America features photographs, drawings, and recipes, as well as the natural history of this much sought after fish.
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What she ate : six remarkable women and the food that tells their stories
by Laura Shapiro
A culinary historian’s short takes on six famous women through the lens of food and cooking explore what these women ate and how their attitudes toward food offer surprising new insights into their lives, in a book that covers Dorothy Wordsworth, Rosa Lewis, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eva Braun, Barbara Pym and Helen Gurley Brown.
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Grape, olive, pig : deep travels through Spain's food culture
by Matt Goulding
The author of Rice, Noodle, Fish presents a celebration of the culture and cuisine of Spain that contextualizes sensuous meals with the stories behind them, offering an evocative tour of everything from Barcelona's tapas bars and modernist culinary temples to the coastal Cadiz Bluefin tuna hunts and the small-plate flavors of Madrid.
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A square meal : a culinary history of the Great Depression
by Jane Ziegelman
The author of 97 Orchard and her culinary historian husband present an in-depth exploration into the Depression-era food crisis and how it indelibly shaped American attitudes about utilitarian cuisine, government-sponsored charities and processed food.
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The course of history : ten meals that changed the world
by Struan Stevenson
An entertaining seat at the table of ten power meals that shaped history--including the menus and recreated recipes! Some of the most consequential decisions in history were decided at the dinner table, accompanied-and perhaps influenced-by copious amounts of food and drink. This fascinating book explores ten of those pivotal meals, presenting the contexts, key participants, table talk, and outcomes of each. It offers unique insight into the minds and appetites of some of history's most famous and notorious characters, including Bonnie Prince Charlie, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Richard Nixon.
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Red meat republic : a hoof-to-table history of how beef changed America
by Joshua Specht
Documents the rise of America's beef industry throughout the past 200 years through the experiences of everyday people, including the ranchers who helped drive westward expansion, the meatpackers who developed industrialized slaughterhouses and the stockyard workers who inspired Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
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Garlic, an edible biography : the history, politics, and mythology behind the world's most pungent food : with over 100 recipes
by Robin Cherry
Garlic weaves a colorful, engaging story about one of the world's timeless ingredients--perfect for food lovers, devoted eaters, and readers of culinary narrative. Garlic is the Lord Byron of produce, a lusty rogue that charms and seduces you, but runs off before dawn leaving a bad taste in your mouth. Called everything from "rustic cure-all" to "Russian penicillin," "Bronx vanilla," and "Italian perfume," garlic has been loved, worshiped, and despised throughout history. Robin Cherry's Garlic is an "edible biography" of one of the foundational ingredients of world cooking. While this book does not claim that garlic saved civilization (though it might cure whatever ails you), it does take us on a grand tour of garlic's fascinating role in history, medicine, literature, and art; its controversial role in bigotry, mythology, and superstition; and its indispensable contribution to the great cuisines of the world.
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Butter : a rich history
by Elaine Khosrova
The delicious kitchen staple we so often take for granted is not merely a stick tucked into our refrigerator door. It's a culinary catalyst, an agent of change, a gastronomic rock star. From its accidental invention in a long-ago herder's pouch to its ubiquitous presence in the world's most fabulous cuisines, butter is boss. Now, it finally gets its due. Award-winning food writer and chef Elaine Khosrova serves up a story as rich, textured, and culturally relevant as butter itself. From the ancient butter bogs of Ireland to the sacred butter sculptures of Tibet, Butter is about so much more than food. Khosrova details its surprisingly vital role in history, politics, economics, nutrition, even spirituality and art.
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Ten restaurants that changed America
by Paul Freedman
Profiles ten restaurants in the United States, demonstrating how each restaurant reveals a broader story of ethnicity and class, from the first American restaurant to the progenitor of modern Californian farm-to-table cuisine
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Combat-ready kitchen : how the U.S. military shapes the way you eat
by Anastacia Marx De Salcedo
Changing the way we think about food forever, an eye-opening exposé shows how the Department of Defense Combat Feeding Directorate plans, funds and spreads the food science that enables it to produce cheap, imperishable rations, examining the U.S. military's influence on the American food industry.
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Food : the history of taste
by Paul Freedman
This richly illustrated book is the first to apply the discoveries of the new generation of food historians to the pleasures of dining and the culinary accomplishments of diverse civilizations, past and present. Editor Paul Freedman has gathered essays by French, German, Belgian, American, and British historians to present a comprehensive, chronological history of taste from prehistory to the present day.
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An edible history of humanity
by Tom Standage
A lighthearted chronicle of how foods have transformed human culture throughout the ages traces the barley- and wheat-driven early civilizations of the near East through the corn and potato industries in America, comparing the progress of farming cultures to those of hunter-gatherers while citing the pivotal contributions of global trade.
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Milk! : a 10,000-year food fracas
by Mark Kurlansky
The New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt offers this global history of milk, incorporating cultural, economic and culinary details into a story intertwined with human civilization, along with recipes throughout
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White bread : a social history of the store-bought loaf
by Aaron Bobrow-Strain
Narrates the social history of white bread in America, describing how it was initially heralded in the early twentieth century as a superfood with symbolic patriotic meaning, only to be renounced by later food reformers as unhealthy
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Fishing : how the sea fed civilization
by Brian M Fagan
Before prehistoric humans began to cultivate grain, they had three main methods of acquiring food: hunting, gathering, and fishing. Hunting and gathering are no longer economically important, having been replaced by their domesticated equivalents, ranching and farming. But fishing, humanity's last major source of food from the wild, has grown into a worldwide industry on which we have never been more dependent. In Fishing, Fagan tours archaeological sites worldwide to show readers how fishing fed the development of cities, empires, and ultimately the modern world."--Dust jacket
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Food at sea : shipboard cuisine from ancient to modern times
by Simon Spalding
Food at Sea: Shipboard Cuisine from Ancient to Modern Times traces the preservation, preparation, and consumption of food at sea, over a period of several thousand years, and in a variety of cultures. The book traces the development of cooking aboard in ancient and medieval times, through the development of seafaring traditions of storing and preparing food on the world's seas and oceans
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Cheese and culture : a history of cheese and its place in western civilization
by Paul Kindstedt
Behind every traditional type of cheese there is a fascinating story. By examining the role of the cheesemaker throughout world history and by understanding a few basic principles of cheese science and technology, we can see how different cheeses have been shaped by and tailored to their surrounding environment, as well as defined by their social and cultural context. Cheese and Culture endeavors to advance our appreciation of cheese origins by viewing human history through the eyes of a cheese scientist. There is also a larger story to be told, a grand narrative that binds all cheeses together into a single history that started with the discovery of cheese making and that is still unfolding to this day.
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Eight flavors : the untold story of American cuisine
by Sarah Lohman
The young gastronomist formerly behind New York magazine's Grub Street food blog presents a culinary history of America that chronicles the diverse cultures that shaped the nation's cuisine, using long-forgotten recipes to explain how eight distinct flavors changed how we eat.
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The language of food : a linguist reads the menu
by Dan Jurafsky
A linguist delves into the world of food, describing the true meanings of descriptive words like “rich” and “crispy” when they appear on a menu and tracing how traditional and favorite dishes spread and changed through colonial shipping routes.
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Dining with the famous and infamous
by Fiona Ross
Dining with the Famous and Infamous is an entertaining journey into the gastronomic peccadilloes of celebrities, stars, and notorious public figures. From outrageous artists to masterpiece authors, from rock stars to actors - everybody eats. Based on the findings of the British gastro-detective Fiona Ross, this volume explores the palates, the plates, and the preferences of the famous and infamous.
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The cooking gene : a journey through African American culinary history in the Old South
by Michael Twitty
Sifting through stories, recipes, genetic tests and historical documents, a renowned culinary historian, in a memoir of Southern culinary tradition and food culture, traces his ancestry through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom, and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue and all Southern cuisine.
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Candy : a century of panic and pleasure
by Samira Kawash
A cultural history exploring how candy became food in America shares reassuring facts about its actual nutritional risks while revealing the historical influences that have inaccurately rendered candy a guilty pleasure associated with a wide range of health problems.
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Grocery : the buying and selling of food in America
by Michael Ruhlman
Michael Ruhlman offers commentary on America's relationship with its food and investigates the overlooked source of so much of it -- the grocery store. In a culture obsessed with food -- how it looks, what it tastes like, where it comes from, what is good for us -- there are often more questions than answers. Ruhlman proposes that the best practices for consuming wisely could be hiding in plain sight -- in the aisles of your local supermarket. Using the human story of the family-run Midwestern chain Heinen's as an anchor to this journalistic narrative, he dives into the mysterious world of supermarkets and the ways in which we produce, consume, and distribute food. Grocery examines how rapidly supermarkets -- and our food and culture -- have changed since the days of your friendly neighborhood grocer. But rather than waxing nostalgic for the age of mom-and-pop shops, Ruhlman seeks to understand how our food needs have shifted since the mid-twentieth century, and how these needs mirror our cultural ones
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Washoe County Library System | 301 S. Center St. Reno, NV
89501 | 775-327-8300
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