An irreverent, surprising, and entirely entertaining look at the little-known history surrounding the foods we know and love Is Italian olive oil really Italian, or are we dipping our bread in lamp oil? Why are we masochistically drawn to foods that can hurt us, like hot peppers? Far from being a classic American dish, is apple pie actually ... English? "As a species, we're hardwired to obsess over food," Matt Siegel explains as he sets out "to uncover...

In this eclectic book of food history, Tom Nealon takes on such overlooked themes as carp and the Crusades, brown sauce and Byron, and chillies and cannibalism, and suggests that hunger and taste are the twin forces that secretly defined the course of civilization. Through war and plague, revolution and migration, people have always had to eat. What and how they ate provoked culinary upheaval around the world as ingredients were traded and fought...

"National Dish peels back the layers of myth, commercialization, and fetishization around the great world cuisines. In so doing, it brings us to a deep appreciation of how the country makes the food, and the food the country"--

Travel through time on a culinary adventure that reveals the humble beginnings and climactic interludes of cuisine throughout the ages to reveal how food has made us who we are today, and how it shapes our future.

"[T]races the history of African American food habits from West African origins through the twenty-first century, offering a unique set of insights into the daily concerns of black people in the US. The book demonstrates that from capture and enslavement through emancipation, the civil rights movement, and beyond, African American have embraced an understanding of the importance of food that goes beyond merely having enough to eat"--

"Psyche A. Williams-Forson is one of our leading thinkers about food in America. In Eating While Black, she offers her knowledge and experience to illuminate how anti-Black racism operates in the practice and culture of eating. She shows how mass media, nutrition science, economics, and public policy drive entrenched opinions among both Black and non-Black Americans about what is healthful and right to eat. Distorted views of how and what Black people...

"Filmmakers and food lovers Jen and Grant dive into the issue of waste from farm, through retail, all the way to the back of their own fridge. After catching a glimpse of the billions of dollars of good food that is tossed each year in North America, they pledge to quit grocery shopping cold turkey and survive only on foods that would otherwise be thrown away."--Container.

"Around the world, indigenous peoples are returning to traditional foods and cooking methods to reestablish healthy lifeways to combat contemporary diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Food Sovereignty the Navajo Way is the first book to focus on the dietary practices of the Navajos from the earliest known times into the present and relate them to the Navajo Nation's participation in the Food Sovereignty movement. Charlotte J. Frisbie documents...