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Analyzing the influence of the fast food industry on American society, an award-winning journalist explores the homogenization of American culture and the impact of the fast food industry on modern-day health, economy, politics, popular culture, entertainment, food production, and more.
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction
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The National Humanities Medal-winning author of The Poisonwood Bible follows the author’s family’s efforts to live on locally and home-grown foods, an endeavor through which they learned lighthearted truths about food production and the connection between health and diet.
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction
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An ecological and anthropological study of eating offers insight into food consumption in the twenty-first century, explaining how an abundance of unlimited food varieties reveals the responsibilities of everyday consumers to protect their health and the environment.
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction
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A compendium of the first five books by the famous food and autobiographical writer, filled with her mixture of insights into gastronomy and life in general. Her dry humor seasons the experience, as when she noted during the food shortages of World War II “when the wolf is at the door, one should invite him in and have him for dinner.”
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction
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This polemic about American cooking grabs the food establishment by the back of the neck and gives it a good shake. It does this partly by setting the historical record straight and partly by exposing the conceits, lazy thinking, and nutritional gobbledegook of so many food writers. Karen Hess was a food historian, John L. Hess was a reporter with a nose for the telling detail, and together they have written a book that is eye-opening, deliciously mean, and, unexpectedly, affectingly evocative. Sadly, it is just as pertinent today as it was in 1977, when it first appeared.
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction
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The aptly named Almond has a jones for almost any kind of candy, especially if it’s made by the smaller and quirkier manufacturers. Part rant, part social history, part confession, this funny and bittersweet book will not only tell you a lot you didn’t know about candy itself but reveal show you the role it plays in all our lives as a source of pleasure and an escape from pain.
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction
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The “Great Subcontinent” is the land mass that embraces Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and, most obviously, India. This handsomely produced volume, full of stunning photographs, personal, crisply descriptive text, and authentic, often simple recipes, takes the reader on a serendipitous voyage of discovery. As in their other inviting books on Asian themes, the authors, a husband-and-wife team, wander through outdoor markets, sample street food, and chat to all manner of cooks, inviting the reader to come explore with them a world of pungent spice and stunning flavor.
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction
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This extraordinary reference work (350 entries, 275 full-color photographs, 500 recipes) provides nearly everything you might want to know about an unusual vegetable (she doesn’t deal with the familiar ones)—where it comes from and where in the world it is especially treasured (not always the same place), what other names it has, what it tastes like, what to look for when you buy it, and how it can be cooked. Schneider approached chefs, cooking teachers, and native cooks for exemplary recipes, but she also gives clear basic cooking techniques so that you can just bring your find home, prepare it, and serve it with supper.
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction
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Cites the reasons why people have become so confused about their dietary choices and discusses the importance of enjoyable moderate eating of mostly traditional plant foods.
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction
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This American culinary icon began life on the Oregon coast, where his mother ran a high-class boarding house renowned for the quality of its food. Beard’s was not a happy childhood, but it was a feast for all the senses, since the raw ingredients were incomparable and the dishes were international in flavor and epicurean in quality. Beard would learn to transform these experiences into the basis of a long and successful career writing cookbooks, teaching at his own cooking school and, later, on his own television shows, and helping establish notable New York restaurants.
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction
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By temperament, the author, Vogue’s indomitable food columnist, is the sort of person who is not only willing to ask the chef for a recipe but to chase him around the restaurant kitchen until he gets it. The results are a heady mix of wittily intellectual inquiry and glorious gluttony, plumbing the mysteries of french fries (make them in horse fat), pursuing the secrets of perfect ice cream, or spelling out the dangers of eating salad.
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction
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No one writes about French cooking in English as well as Richard Olney, and this collaboration with Lulu Peyraud offers a rare delight—quality time spent in the kitchen in the company of an extraordinary Provençal cook. She chatters as she cooks, Olney listens and observes, and the result is perhaps the best description ever given of a cook who works not from recipes but from instinct, years of practice, and hands-on familiarity.
Tagged: Food, Non-fiction