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Bibliography

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Abad, Reynald. Le grand marché: L’approvisionnement alimentaire de Paris sous l’Ancien Régime.(Paris: Fayard, 2002).

Abaka, Edmund. “Kola is God’s Gift:” Agricultural Production, Export Initiatives and the Kola Industry of Assante and the Gold Coast, c. 1820-1950. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005.
Abaka’s investigation of the kola industry is a brief but significant addition to the scholarship on this important but little-studied commodity.
Trevor Getz, American Historical Review

Achaya, K. T.  Indian Food: A Historical Companion.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Discusses the full range and history of the Indian diet from prehistoric times to the modern era.

Adams, Jane.  Fighting for the Farm: Rural America Transformed.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2002.

Adams, Jane (ed.).  Proceedings of the Ninth Symposium of Australian Gastronomy: Food and Power. (no publishing information). 
See the review by Sarah Shepherd in Reviews and Articles by Members of the Research Centre.

Adamson, Melitta Weiss (ed.).  Das Buch von guter Spise. (The Book of Good Food) Krems, Austria: Medium Aevum Quotidianum Sonderband IX, 2000.
This is a welcome edition, commentary and translation of "the oldest German cookbook." 
PPC

________. Regional Cuisines in Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays.  London: Routledge, 2002.
The book would serve as an excellent overview for students or amateurs, but [at US$85] this is a prince’s ransom. 
PPC

Albala, Ken. Eating Right in the Renaissance.  Berkeley: University of California, 2002.
Albala’s engaging tour through the host of Renaissance dietary theories reminds us that our preoccupations with food and susceptibility to cranky advice about nutrition are nothing new. This is superior scholarship delivered with a light touch. 
Rachel Laudan

________. Beans: A History. Oxford: Berg, 2007.

________. Cooking in Europe, 1250-1650. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press,  2006.

________. The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe. Urbana: University of Illinois    Press, 2006.

________. Food in early modern Europe. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press,  2003

________. (Series editor) Food Culture around the World. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003-2005.
The series is predictably uneven, and its format limiting, but it helps to propel food scholarship into the twenty first century with the task of culturing how we think about food culture.
Susan Tax Freeman, Gastronomica
Ashkenazi, Michael, and Jeanne Jacob. Food Culture in Japan.
Heine, Peter. Food Culture in the Near East, Middle East, and North Africa.
Mason, Laura. Food Culture in Great Britain.
Newman, Jacqueline M. Food Culture in China.
Sen, Colleen Taylor. Food Culture in India.
Houston, Lynn Marie. Food Culture in the Caribbean.
Long-Solís, Janet, and Luís Alberto Vargas. Food Culture in Mexico.
Lovera, José Rafael. Food Culture in South America.
Mack, Glen R., and Asele Surina. Food Culture in Russia and Central Asia.
Medina, F. Javier. Food Culture in Spain.
Osseo-Asare, Fran. Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Allen, Patricia. Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.
Together at the Table enables one to think about the agrifood movement in a more holistic manner, question our individual roles in the food system, and analyze our consumer nature and place in the world.
Heather McIlvaine-Newsad and Christopher D. Merrett, Gastronomica

Allen, Stuart Lee. In the Devil’s Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Fruit. New York: Ballantine Books, 2002.
A delightful read if consumed in bite-seize morsels. It is a little like pornography, titillating, works up to a point, but quickly gets tiresome.
Krishnendu Ray, Gastronomica

Allport, Susan. The Primal Feast: Food, Sex, Foraging, and Love. New York: Harmony Books, 2000.
This well-written book explores the complex relationship between the production and consumption of food, the evolution of Homo sapiens, and the difference between women and men. 
Les Field, Gastronomica

Allport, Susan. The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
If Allport is right, the disappearance of omega-3s from the Western diet is the key to understanding why that diet is making us so sick.
Michael Pollan

Ambrosoli, Mauro.  The Wild and the Sown: Agriculture and Botany in Western Europe, 1350-1850.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
This book describes the spread of new agricultural practice in the half millennium after 1350, and reconstructs a neglected part of Europe's agricultural past: the introduction of fodder crops and the continuous reorganization of traditional botanical inputs within a new system of farming.

Anderson, E. N. Everyone Eats: Understanding Food and Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
Clearly designed as introductory but thoughtful reading for the general public and college students, the book baffles when Anderson’s generalizations turn to personal judgment, as in the case of the reception of tamarind in Mexico.
Katherine Dillon, Gastronomica

Anderson, E. N., with Aurora Dzib Xihum de Cen, Feliz Medina Tzuc, and Pastor Valdez Chale. Political Ecology in a Yucatec Maya Community. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005.
Anderson makes a compelling argument for the wisdom of indigenous methods of agriculture that are based in diverse plants, multiple microecological zones, and intense knowledge about the conditions needed for a successful harvest.
Clare Sammells, Gastronomica

Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
North and south, the livestock roved into the interior, many becoming feral and often encroaching on Indian cultivated fields. Livestock became the avant-garde of European settlement. When and where the Indians did adopt livestock, these animals in turn encroached on English fields, and the immigrant farmers blamed the indigenous people.
Alfred W. Crosby, American Historical Review

Andrews, Tamra.  Nectar and Ambrosia: An Encyclopedia of Food in World Mythology.  ABC Clio, 2000.
The magic properties and uses of food by both mortals and immortals as represented in the world’s myths and legends are brought together.

Appelbaum, Robert. Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections: Literature, Culture, and Food Among the Early Moderns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
This book is as sumptuous and well structured as the Renaissance banquets in describes.
Michael Schoenfeldt

Armstrong, Elizabeth M. Conceiving Risk, Bearing Responsibility: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Diagnosis of Moral Disorder. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
An extraordinarily lucid and well-balanced analysis. Using the tools of history, epidemiology, and sociology, Armstrong has made the social construction of fetal alcohol syndrome a site for illuminating research and not a one-dimensional polemical slogan.
Charles E. Rosenberg

Arndt, Alice, ed. Culinary Biographies: A Dictionary of the World’s Great Historic Chefs, Cookbook Authors and Collectors, Farmers, Gourmets, Home Economists, Nutritionists, Restaurateurs, Philosophers, Physicians, Scientists, Writers, and Others Who Influenced the Way We Eat Today. Houston: Yes Press, 2006.
This book is a gem—a highly useful reference work, a thought-provoking journey, and a delight to read page by page.
Laura Schenone, Gastronomica

Artusi, Pellegrino. Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Living Well. Murtha Baca and Stephen Sartarelli, trans. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.
The cookbook by Pellegrino (1820-1911) towers above all other Italian cookbooks because the author sought to teach his compatriots not only about the glories of their cuisine but also about what it means to be Italian.
Fred Plotkin, Gastronomica

Ashkenazi , Michael and Jacob, Jeanne. The Essence of Japanese Cuisine: An Essay on Food and Culture.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2000.
[The authors’] main objective was to provide an overview of the relationship between Japan’s culture and its cuisine, and to "bolster some of the theoretical ideas relating cuisine and culture . . . suggested in Western cultures. They propose to trace the influence of a long list of factors that impinge upon food choices: material conditions, symbolic systems, social norms, families, social institutions, class structures, religion, the seasons, taste, and aesthetics. 
John Kochevar, Gastronomica

Atkins, Peter and Bowler, Ian.  Food in Society: Economy, Culture, Geography. London: Arnold, 2001.
A general overview of the expanding field of social and cultureal studies of food. It is an extremely ambitious book, full of references from various areas of food studies, ranging from geography and anthropology to rural sociology and agricultural economics. 
Daniel Ralston Block, Gastronomica
See the review by Sarah Shepherd in Reviews and Articles by Members of the Research Centre

Audoin-Rouzeau, F., and F. Sabban, F., eds. Un aliment sain dans un corps sain : Perspectives historiques. Tours: Université François Rabelais, 2007.

Avakian, Arlene Voski, and Barbara Haber, eds. From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005.
Unlike some other food studies collections, this edited work of original essays is not centered on a single topic or located in a single academic discipline or methodology. Instead the essays are responses to and reflections upon a simple but powerful question: What is the relationship between food and gender?
John Finn, Gastronomica

Ayala, César J.  American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898-1934.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1999.
This book is both a contribution to the study of the sugar industry in the Caribbean and an examination of the processes of American imperialism in this tropical setting. 
J. H. Galloway, American Historical Review

Ayres, Ralph. Ralph Ayres’ Cookery Book. Jane Jakeman, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Ralph Ayres was master of the dining hall of New College, Oxford, in the 1770s.

Baime, A. J. Big Shots: The Men Behind the Booze. New York: Penguin, 2004.
The real-life stories of Jim Beam, Jack Daniel, Jose Cuervo, Johnnie Walker, Baileys, Smirnoff, Bacardi, Seagram, Captain Morgan, Dom Perignon, Beefeater, and Hennessy.

Banerji, Chititra.  The Hour of the Goddess, Memories of Women, Food and Ritual in Bengal.  Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2001.
A very beautiful book about food.
PPC

Barndt, Deborah. Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail. Aurora: Garamond Press, 2002.
The tomato trail runs from Mexican agribusiness to Canadian supermarkets and restaurants. The object of the study passes along a tangled route, from the hands of indigenous women in the Mexican fields all the way to single Canadian moms scanning product codes in checkout stalls.
Gary Genosko, Gastronomica

Barnes, Donna R., and Peter G. Rose. Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life. Albany: Albany Institute of History and Art, 2002.
Art historical and gastronomical studies here complement each other and enhance our appreciation of the artists’ works, an admirable example of how food history can illuminate art history, while taking on board the complexities of interpretation that might otherwise distort our vision.
Gillian Riley, Gastronomica

Bascove (ed.). Sustenance and Desire: A Food Lover’s Anthology of Sensuality and Humor. Boston: David R. Godine, 2004.

Bataille-Benguigui, Marie Claire and Cousin, Françoise (eds.)  Cuisines: Reflets des Sociétés.  Paris: Editions Sépia-Musée de l'Homme, 1996.
See the review by Barbara Santich in Reviews and Articles by Members of the Research Centre.

Becker, Jasper.  Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine.  New York: Henry Holt, 1999.

Bell, Michael Mayerfeld (ed.). Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.
Through an accessible narrative that combines a colloquial, sympathetic, yet sophisticated discussion of the broad concerns and controversies facing the sustainable agricultural movement with finely detailed research based on in-depth interviews and long-term participatory observation, Bell and his collaborators introduce the reader to the Practical Farmers of Iowa, a grassroots sustainable agriculture organization founded and run by working farmers.
Timothy Vos, Gastronomica

Banerji, Chitrita. Land of Milk and Honey: Travel in the History of Indian Food. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2006 (available from Berg).
Tells the stories of India’s food. Te essays included here range from the rituals of propitiatory meals to the intricate variety of art connected with food and ritual.

Belasco, Warren and Scranton, Philip (eds.).  Food and Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies.  New York: Routledge, 2002.
Warren Belasco, "Food Matters: Perspectives on an Emerging Field;" Sidney W. Mintz, "Food and Eating: Some Persisting Questions;" Kolleen M. Guy, "Rituals of Pleasure in the Land of Treasures: Wine Consumption and the Making of French Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century;" Steve Penfold, "’Eddie Shack Was No Tim Horton:’ Donuts and the Folklore of Mass Culture in Canada;" Richard R. Wilk, "Food and Nationalism: The Origins of ‘Belizean Food;’" Amy Bentley, "Inventing Baby Food: Gerber and the Discourse of Infancy in the United States;" Martin Bruegel, "How the French Learned to Eat Canned Food, 1809-1930s;" Jeffrey Charles, "Searching for Gold in Guacamole: California Growers Market the Avocado, 1910-1994;" Tracey Deutsch, "Untangling Alliances: Social Tensions Surrounding Independent Grocery Stores and the Rise of Mass Retailing," Donna R. Gabaccia, "As American as Budweiser and Pickles? Nation-Building in American Food Industries," Sylvia Ferrero, "Comida sin par. Consumption of Mexican Food in Los Angeles: ‘Foodscapes’ in a Transnational Consumer Society;" Jeffrey M. Pilcher, "Industrial Tortillas and Folkloric Pepsi: The Nutritional Consequences of Hybrid Cuisines in Mexico;" Keith Allen, "Berlin in the Belle Epoque: A Fast-Food History;" Mauricio Borrero, "Food and the Politics of Scarcity in Urban Soviet Union."

________. Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took On the Food Industry. Second update edition. Oxford: Berg, 2006.
A definitive account of how the sixties’ counterculture changed the way we eat.
Michael Pollan

________. Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Reviewed by Roger Haden in Newsletter 43.
This astute, sly, warmly human critique of the basic belly issues that have absorbed and defined Americans politically, socially, and economically for the past 200 years is a knockout. Belasco’s important book, crammed with knowledge, is absolutely necessary for an understanding of where we are now.
Betty Fussell

Bender, David A. Oxford Dictionary of Food and Nutrition, New Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
The book includes a range of carefully chosen terms that straddle well the interrelated fields of cookery, science and history.
Roger Haden

Bendiner, Keith. Food in Painting: From the Renaissance to the Present. London: Reaktion Books, 2004.
Bendiner’s project is to prove that food painting is a separate genre of art history, on that has been surprisingly neglected in the past. He contends that food painting should be savored for the variety of information such images reveal about myth, medicine, religion, and politics.
Dorothy Moss, Gastronomica

Benporat, Claudio.  Feste e banchetti: Convivialità italiana fra Tre e Quattrocento.  Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2001.

Bentley, Amy.  Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity.  Urbana: University of Illinois, 1998.

Beriss, David, and David Sutton, eds. The Restaurants Book: Ethnographies of Where We Eat. Oxford: Berg, 2007.

Berzok, Linda Murray. American Indian Food. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005.
The pursuit of Native American foodways has been hampered by roadblocks. . . . It is therefore with great joy that we welcome Berzok’s book, first in the series Food in American History, texts designed to complement high-school-level social studies programs.
Alice Ross, Gastronomica

Bestor, Theodore C. Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Bestor is a scholar, and his book isn’t for everyone; the four hundred pages brim with academic excursions into such esoterica as obligational contracting, upstream integration, and segmentary cartels. But there are nuggets of fun scattered throughout, and the book represents a heroic accomplishment of anthropological sleuthing.
Trevor Corson, Gastronomica

Bijlefeld, M., and S. K. Zoumbaris. Encyclopedia of Diet Fads. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003
In this collection of historical and contemporary approaches to weight loss the authors set out to describe historical and contemporary approaches to weight loss, from the mainstream to the fringe. The book is not really aimed at an academic audience and will only hold interest for scholars as an example of  popular writing on nutrition and diet.
Paul Fieldhouse, Food, Culture, and Society

Bilson, Gay. Plenty: Digressions on Food. Camberwell: Penguin, 2004.
While there are many books about food in libraries and bookstores, Plenty is distinguished not only by the quality of its prose but also by its insights; it has been written not by an observer or critic but by a practitioner, a professional who has experienced the joys of cleaning grease traps and of perfecting a dish such as brioche with poached bone marrow and red-wine butter. Gay’s descriptions of food are instantly evocative.
Barbara Santich

Bober, Phyllis Pray.  Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy.  Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
[The author] argues that the concept of haute cuisine–cooking as fine art–should be traced back to antiquity, if not prehistory. Bober, an expert in art history and archaeology as well as food history, brings all three disciplines to the table to examine food preparation and consumption from prehistoric Turkey to late medieval Europe.
Elizabeth McGowan, Gastronomica

Bogue, Margaret Beattie.  Fishing the Great Lakes: An Environomental History.  Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2000.
In writing about the past, Margaret Beattie Bogue has written a book about our present. The past–in this case the depletion of fish in the Great lakes due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and failure of governments to limit or restrain fishing or pollution–is all to familiar to us today.
John T. Cumbler, American Historical Review

Boisard, Pierre. Camembert: A National Myth. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
The status gained and attributes lost over the historical course of this famous French solft chees are regained and gently debunked by sociologist of work Pierre Boisard . . . . “Just to be perfectly clear, let us admit there is no such thing as a wholly traditional Camembert.”
Gary Genosko, Gastronomica

Bottéro, Jean. The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Bottéro tells us that many of the culinary techniques, kitchen-organization structures, and professional titles we attribute to Europeans of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries were firmly in place in Mesopotamia by 1600 BC. Using cuneiform tablets from the Babylonian Collection of Yale University, Bottéro creates a remarkable and convincing panorama of the culinary life and rich cuisine of the ancient Mesopotamians.
Jeffrey Miller, Gastronomica

Bourguinat, Nicholas.  Les grains du désordre: L’Etat face aux violence frumentaires dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle.  Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2002.

Bové, José and Dufour, François.  The World Is Not for Sale: Farmers against Junk Food.  London: Verso, 2001.
As readers, we witness the difficulties of farming and of trying to change people’s perceptions of the rural life, as well as the struggles involved in confronting large multinational corporations.
Toby A. Ten Eyck, Gastronomica

Bower, Anne L., ed. Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film. London: Routledge, 2005.
While not the definitive volume on the subject, Reel Food nevertheless remains an enjoyable journey through the topic of food in film—and overall it constitutes a varied and tasty meal.
Suzie Ferrie, Food, Culture, and Society

Bradley, Martha.  The British Housewife: or, The Cook, Housekeeper's and Gardiner's Companion.  Facsimile edition in six volumes, with introduction by Gilly Lehmann.  Blackawton, Totnes: Prospect Books, 1997-1998.
Martha Bradley intended the subject of her book, originally published in weekly parts in 1756, to be 'oeconomy'. Her information was based partly on previous writings, often acknowledged, but principally, she wrote, 'from what assistance we have received from the Communications of others, and from our own Experience'. It seems not to have been successful, since after publication in two volumes in 1756 or 1757 it was not republished.
Gilly Lehmann, whose PhD thesis was on eighteenth-century English cookbooks, has added an extensive introduction to this facsimile. She describes Mrs. Bradley's cooking style as essentially French, and in particular French 'nouvelle cuisine' in the style of Massialot and La Chappelle, which probably explains the lack of success; while the aristocracy of the mid-eighteenth century might have appreciated this cookery, most English households seemed to prefer simple, basic, English dishes. Gilly Lehmann's diligent and meticulous research into the origins of Mrs Bradley's recipes (most, she shows, came from Hannah Glasse) could well serve a model for other culinary historians. Reviewed by Barbara Santich

Brandon, Ruth. The People’s Chef: Alexis Soyer, A Life in Seven Courses. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2004.
For those who have not yet discovered Soyer, Brandon’s book is an excellent introduction. Readers who are already familiar with Soyer’s life and work will find many new insights.
April Bullock, Gastronomica

Brennan, Thomas.  Burgundy to Champagne: The Wine Trade in Early Modern France.  Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Brennan's previous book was Public Drinking and Popular Culture in 18th-Century Paris. He now turns his attention to the development of a market in wine, especially the long-distant trade to Paris, focussing primarily on the 18th century once again. The provincial brokers who controlled this trade rose to positions of power and wealth.

Brewer, Priscilla J.  From Fireplace to Cookstove: Technology and the Domestic Ideal.  Syracuse: Syracuse University, 2000.
Regrettably, she says little about what happened to food itself as cooks moved from fireplaces to stoves–true roasting, for instance, disappeared. But within the confines of her material, she makes lively use of the sources.
Laura Shapiro, Gastronomica

Brown, Linda Keller and Mussell, Kay (eds.).  Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States. Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 2000.

Brown-May, Andrew.  Espresso!: Melbourne Coffee Stories.  Melbourne: Arcadia, 2001.
See the review by Don McMaster in Reviews and Articles by Members of the Research Centre.

Bruman, Henry J.  Alcohol in Ancient Mexico.  Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000.

Brumont, Francis.  Madirian et Saint-Mont: Histoire et devenir des vignobles. Biarritz: Atlantica, 1999.

Bucheli, Marcelo. Bananas and Business: The United Fruit Company in Colombia, 1899-2000. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
The author offers an insightful exploration of how the company achieved a dominant position in Colombia, and its subsequent shift from the production to the marketing of bananas.
Thomas O’Brien, American Historical Review

Buell, Paul D.,  Anderson, Eugene N.,  and Perry, Charles (eds.).  A Soup for the Qan: Chines Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as Seen in Hu Szu-hui’s Yin-shan Cheng-yao.  London: Keegan Paul, 2000.
This is the first full English translation of a remarkable dietary guide and cookery manual, one that was specially designed to keep brain and physique in harmony.
Berrin Toroslan, Gastronomica

Bulliet, Richard W. Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
In this compelling exploration of the different ways societies have reinforced, symbolized, and rationalized their relations with animals, the author argues that “we are today living through a watershed in human-animal relations that is affection our material, social, and imaginative lives.”

Bunyard, Edward A. The Anatomy of Dessert: With a Few Notes on Wine. New York: Modern Library, 2006.
New edition of a book first published in London in 1929.Berriedale-Johnson, Michelle. Festive Feasts Cookbook. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.

Burnett, John. England Eats Out: a Social History of Eating Out in England from 1830 to the Present. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2004.
All too often “eating out” is taken to mean “fancy dining” in a restaurant that probably has tablecloths. Refreshingly, John Burnett takes a literal interpretation; eating out is simply the antithesis of eating in, of eating at home. His latest book, England Eats Out, is emphatically not a history of restaurants. Rather, it makes the point that eating away from home is very often a matter of necessity, as it was for workers in the early nineteenth century who started at 6.00 am and for the women working in munitions factories during World War II.
Barbara Santich

Burnett, John.  Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain. London: Routledge, 1999.
This study of the social history of drinks in Britain from the late 17th century to the present examines individual drinks and drinking patterns that varied with age, gender, region, and class.

Burns, Eric. The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003.
Burns . . . works in a more anecdotal than academic mode. His prose is breezy and energetic, and he comes across more storyteller than scholar—not a bad role to be in if your job is to describe the loopy dance that American and booze have enjoyed together over the past few centuries.
Ray Isle, Gastronomica

Burton, Marda, and Kenneth Holditch. Galatoire’s: Biography of a Bistro. Athens: Hill Street Press, 2004.
The book documents a way of life particular to the Deep South through key periods in American history, shedding light on the origins of Creole culture and cuisine, the US immigration story, and issues such as prohibition, racial segregation, and gender equality. It entertains with its lively social commentary and inspires those with a deeper interest in Cajun and Creole culinary traditions to do more research on the background of the historical dishes that have been preserved on Galatoire’smenu. Above all, it captures the spirit of a fascinating, food-obsessed city and the soul of a truly unique restaurant.
Janet Boileau

Byrne, Al.  My Guinness Times: A Memoir. Dublin: Town House and Country House, 1999.

Cagle, William.  A Matter of Taste.  Oak Knoll Press: New Castle, 1999.
An inclusive bibliography of the international works of The John T. Gernon collection of The Lilly Library.
Cagle, William and Stafford, Lisa Killion.  American Books on Food and Drink.  Oak Knoll Press: New Castle, 1998.

Calhoun, Creighton Lee.  Old Southern Apples.  Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 2000.
Reviews the history and uses of the apples in the American south.

Campbell, Bruce M. S.  English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450.  New York: Cambridge University, 2000.
Manorial lords appear in much of the book as frustrated capitalists rather than the exploitative overlords of a partially unfree, poverty-stricken population. Campbell has provided us with a wonderfully detailed picture of seigniorial medieval agriculture.
Jane Whittle, American Historical Review

Campbell, Christy. The Botanist and the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the World. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2005.
The author demonstrates with great flair that the challenges phylloxera imposed on late nineteenth-century France were far deeper than simply keeping vines alive. . . . The tale of the struggle t control the pest is also an account of the coming of age of the scientific community in France; of culture wars not only across oceans but across town lines; of economic struggles that split regions apart.
Tara Q. Thomas, Gastronomica

Campbell, Robert A.  Sit Down and Drink Your Beer: Regulating Vancouver’s Beer Parlours, 1925-1954.  Toronto: University of Toronto, 2001.
See the review by Andrea Cast in Reviews and Articles by Members of the Research Centre

Capatti, Alberto, and Massimo Montanari. Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
This book is such a mishmash of ideas and information, so irritatingly complied and pompously written and moreover so poorly translated, that it’s tempting simply to throw it down in exasperation. However, the reader who persists will find that there are indeed nuggets to be extracted.
Nancy Harmon Jenkins, Gastronomica

Carlin, Martha and Rosenthal, Joel T. (eds.).  Food and Eating in Medieval Europe.  London: The Hambledon Press, 1998.
Marjorie A. Brown, "The Feast Hall in Anglo-Saxon Society," Elizabeth M. Biebel, "Pilgrims to Table: Food Consumption in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales;" Martha Carlin, "Fast Food and Urban Living Standards in Medieval England;" Christopher Dyer, "Did the Peasants Really Starve in Medieval England?" Julia Marvin, "Cannibalism as an Aspect of Famine in Two English Chronicles;" James A. Galloway, "Driven by Drink? Ale Consumption and the Agrarian Economy of the London Region, c. 1300-1400;" Constance B. Hieatt, "Making Sense of Medieval Culinary Records: Much Done, But Much More to Do;" Margaret Murphy, "Feeding Medieval Cities: Some Historical Approaches;" ffiona Swabey, "The Household of Alice de Bryene, 1412-13;" Alan S. Weber, "Queu du Roi, Roi des Queux: Taillevent and the Profession of Medieval Cooking;" Susan F. Weiss, "Medieval and Renaissance Wedding Banquets and Other Feasts."

Carney, Judith.  Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas.  Cambridge: Harvard University, 2001.
This book seeks, through an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspective on the history of rice cultivation in the Atlantic basin, to recover "a significant African contribution to the agricultural history of the Americas."
Lorena S. Walsh, American Historical Review

Carpenter, Kenneth J.   Beriberi, White Rice, and Vitamin B: A Disease, a Cause, and a Cure.  Berkeley: University of California, 2000.

Carpenter, Stephanie A. On the Farm Front: The Women’s Landed Army in World War II. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003.
Carpenter has now written a book on gender changes on the rural front in her thorough description of the Women’s Landed Army (WLA), formed in 1943 as part of the Emergency Farm Labor program. This program was designed to provide labor power for the nation’s farms where it was needed and to make up for profound labor shortages caused by military recruitment and migration to urban centers.
Maureen Honey, American Historical Review

Carrington, Selwyn H. H.  The Sugar Industry and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1775-1810.  Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.

Cass, Bruce (ed.).  The American Companion to the Wines of North America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Overall, the sheer volume of information compiled makes [it] useful, but encough inaccuracies exist that the reader must beware of taking every entry as gospel.
Heidi Yorkshire, Gastronomica

Cato on Farming (De Agricultura).  Trans with commentary by Andrew Dalby, (trans.) and (ed.).  Blackawton, Totnes: Prospect Books, 1998.
Andrew Dalby describes Cato's treatise, written in the second century BC, as 'the earliest surviving complete work of Latin prose literature'. A thoroughly practical manual for the owner or manager of a rural estate, it gives a complete guide to the year's work (just before vintage, have the windfall olives salted and buy in anchovies), provides instructions on building olive presses and a room to house them, describes in detail the operations of the olive harvest, and offers a few recipes - for bread and cakes, for improving faulty wines and for curing oxen bitten by a snake. Certain rituals, which were clearly part of the standard farming calendar, are also described: the Feast for the Oxen, before the spring ploughing, and the sacrifice of the Harvest Sow, to take place prior to harvest. The Latin text is printed together with the translation, and Andrew Dalby's introduction suggests the context of the advice: Cato was principally interested in the investment potential of a farm.
Reviewed by Barbara Santich

Caton, Mary Anne (ed.).  Fooles and Fricasees: Food in Shakespeare’s England.  Washington DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1999.
As opulent as it is informative, [this book] offers a feast of images and information that will whet the appetite of anyone interested in Shakespeare, early modern England, women’s history, or the history, preparation, delectation, and meaning of food.
Ilona Bell, Gastronomica

Chambers, Thomas A. Drinking the Waters: Creating an American Leisure Class at Nineteenth-Century Mineral Springs. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003.
How American negotiated and defined class and sectionalism at mineral spring resorts in New York and Virginia.

Charlip, Julie A. Cultivating Coffee: The Farmers of Carazo, Nicaragua, 1880-1930. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003.
This is a model monograph of effective argument and impressive research. It takes its place in an emerging interpretation of pre-Somoza rural Nicaragua that see much of the countryside as, if not a utopia, at least a world of modest possibilities and prosperities for small farmers, an interpretation at odds with an imagine past driven both by class politics and twentieth-century realities.
David McCreery, American Historical Review

Chelminski, Rudolph. The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine. New York: Penguin, 2005.
The story of the suicide of celebrity chef Bernard Loiseau.

Chelminski, Rudolph. I’ll Drink to That: Beaujolais and the French Peasant Who Made It the World’s Most Popular Wine. New York: Penguin, 2007.

Christensen, Erleen J. In War and Famine: Missionaries in China’s Honan Province in the 1940s. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005.
She provides an eye-witness account using letters, diaries, and personal accounts, many still in private hands, of one of the worst famines in China’s history and the great devastation caused by advancing Japanese troops.

Chaney, Lisa.  Elizabeth David–A Biography.  Oxford: Macmillan, 1998.

Chatterjee, Piya.  A Time for Tea: Women, Labor, and Post/Colonial Politics on an Indian Plantation.  Durham: Duke University, 2001.
Chatterjee’s real achievement is providing a multifaceted understanding of a complex socioeconomic system that touches each person who enjoys a simple cup of tea.
Chitrita Banerji, Gastronomica

Clarence-Smith, William Gervase, and Steven Topik, eds. The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, 1500-1089. New York: Cambridge University press, 2003.

Clark, Christine.  The British Malting Industry since 1830.  Rio Grande: Hamilton Press, 1998.
This worthwhile study of the British malting industry confirms, yet again, that, as in politics, a particular company's success has meant a long climb up Benjamin Disraeli's "greasy pole," with little room at the top for survivors. Clark ably describes the changing structure of the industry that began the nineteenth century with thousands of licensed maltsters and has ended up today with only a handful.
V. Markham Lester, American Historical Review

Clarkson, L. A.  and Crawford, E. Margaret.  Feast and Famine: Food and Nutrition in Ireland, 1500-1920.  New York: Oxford University, 2001.
What we have is a history of food intake, and more particularly of nutrition, and hence that greater breadth of history that links consumption to health, disease, and general wellbeing.
Michael Turner, American Historical Review

Cleland, Elizabeth. A New and Easy Method of Cookery, Facsimile of first edition, Edinburgh, 1755, with introduction by Peter Brears (Berwick upon Tweed/Totnes: Paxton Trust/ Prospect Books, 2005).
According to Peter Brears, Mrs. Cleland’s book “is one of the most important sources regarding the culinary history of mid-eighteenth-century Scotland.” Written for the young ladies who attended her cookery school, it reflects the English style of cookery adopted by Scottish gentry (many recipes were “borrowed,” as was standard practice at that time, from such English classics as Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy and Eliza Smith’s Compleat Housewife) and contains very few of the dishes today considered to be typically Scottish. Nevertheless, as Peter Brears points out, the range of oatmeal recipes and the variety of recipes for venison all testify to the book’s Scottish origins and character (Barbara Santich).

Coff, Christian. The Taste for Ethics: An Ethic of Food Consumption. Dordrecht: Springer, 2006.
The issues surrounding the theory of ethical behaviour in relation to food are complex, as Coff makes clear in his admirable book. Coff’s meticulous, closely argued text offers in the first place an excursus on the history and philosophy of science that has influenced attitudes to food and to food ethics, in particular. It therefore traces the philosophic ideas which have shaped those attitudes and which were subsequently applied through science and technology, and reproduced by the modern food industry.
Roger Haden

Coates, Clive.  An Encyclopedia of the Wines and Domaines of France.  Berkeley: University of California, 2001.
Coates discusses every appellation and explains its character, distinguishes the best growers, and uses a star system to identify the finest estates.

Cockfield, Jamie H., ed. Black Lebeda: The Russian Famine Diary of ARA Kazan District Supervisor J. Rives Childs, 1921-1923. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2006.

Cohen Ferris, Marcie. Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
This is a well-researched book, lovingly told with personal anecdotes, illustrative visual materials, and unlike most scholarly works, historical and family recipes. Yet what is curiously absent from this book is a geographic definition of the Jewish South: Why are Texas and Florida, for example, not on Cohen Ferris’s southern Jewish map?
Lara I. Rabinovitch, Gastronomica

Colquhoun, K., Taste: The Story of Britain through Its Cooking. London: Bloomsbury, 2007.

Comet, Georges (ed.). L’outillage agricole médiéval et moderne et son histoire. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003.

Cool, H. E. M. Eating and Drinking in Roman Britain.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Copas, Liz.  A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset.  Stanbridge: The Dovecote Press, 2002.
The first part of the book deals with the history of cider in Somerset . . . . The second part of the book contains descriptions and photographs of modern apples, with cross-sectional drawings, wonderful bits of local history and a vivid sense of an organic knowledge.
James Crowden, PPC

Counihan, Carole M.  The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender Meaning and Power.  New York: Routledge, 1999.
She brilliantly supports her contention that "foodways constitute an organized system, a language that . . . conveys meaning and contributes to the organization of the natural and social world."
Margaret Lael Milesell, Gastronomica

________. Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family, and Gender in Twentieth-Century Florence. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Counihan effectively demonstrates the centrality of food and diet to the Florentine worldview and the extension of food into all aspects of Florentine culture.
Maura Hametz, Food, Culture, and Society

Counihan, Carole, and P/ Van Esterik, eds. (2008) Food and Culture: A Reader (second edition). New York: Routledge, 2008.

________(ed.).  Food in the USA: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Taken together, the essays attest to both the importance of bringing new questions about American culture to the table through food studies, and to the power of food studies to think through recurrent concerns anew.
Charlotte Biltekoff, Gastronomica

Courtwright, David D.  Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World.  Cambridge MA: Harvard University, 2001.
[This book examines how] "the big three" (alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine) and "the little three" (opium, cannabis, and coca) become items of global commerce . . . . an invaluable and brave attempt to synthesize global historical analysis of a complex field.
Virginia Burridge, American Historical Review

Coveney, John.  Food, Morals and Meaning: The Pleasure and Anxiety of Eating.  London: Routledge, 2000.
See the review by Jennifer Hillier in Reviews and Articles by Members of the Research Centre
Crowden, James.  Cider: The Forgotten Miracle.  Somerton: Cyder Press, 1999.
James Crowden is the laureate of cider.
PPC

Cowan, Brian. The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Cowan’s book is an important and beautifully produced work on the history of the coffeehouse, especially in its account of the masculine cast of coffeehouse sociability, the state regulation of coffeehouses, and the trade of coffeehouse keeping in London.
Markman Ellis, American Historical ReviewCooper, Artemis.  Writing at the Kitchen Table–The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David.  London: Michael Joseph, 1999.

Cullen, L. M.  The Brandy Trade under the Ancien Régime.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
This study of the brandy trade explores the origins, production and marketing of brandy from the Cognac region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Cullen shows that the brandy trade was based on a sophisticated regional economy, which, by 1720, had become a key component of French involvement in the modern international trading system.

Curtis, Robert I.  Ancient Food Technology.  Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000.
Discusses innovations in food processing and preservation from the palaeolithic period through to the late Roman Empire.

Cwiertka, Katarzyna, and Boudewijn Walraven, eds. Asian Food: the Global and the Local. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001.
The collection investigates interconnections between globalization and food during the twentieth century; this it does by tracing changes in Asian foodways both inside and outside Asia.
Faruk Tabak, Gastronomica

________.  Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity. London: Reaktion Books, 2006.

Dalby, Andrew.  Dangerous Tastes: Spices in History.  Berkeley: University of California, 2000.
Spices and aromatics–those powerful, pleasurable, sensual ingredients–have been some of the most sought-after substances in human history. Concentrating on traditional spices that are still part of world trade: cinnamon, closes, ginger, pepper, saffron, and chili, Dalby explores their captivating past. He gathered information from sources in many languages, interweaving history with the story of their discovery and various uses.

Dalby, Andrew.  Food in the Ancient World: An A-Z.  London: Routledge, 2002.
Daunton, Martin and Hilton, Matthew (eds.).  The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America.  New York: Berg, 2001.
Contains articles on rum and bread and milk.

Dalby, Andrew. Flavours of Byzantium. Totnes: Prospect Books, 2004.
This book is, in the author’s words, "an attempt to recreate the food culture of mediaeval Constantinople, as it was really experienced by those who inhabited or visited the city: it is based on what they themselves wrote about it." These writers include Liutprand of Cremona (the bishop of Cremona who visited Constantinople twice in the tenth century), Simeon Seth (who wrote a comprehensive treatise, On the Properties of Foods, in the eleventh century) and the anonymous seventh-century and twelfth-century authors of, respectively, De Cibis and the Prosodic Poems.
Barbara Santich

Daley, Ann Scarlett, Sweet on the West: How Candy Built a Colorado Treasure. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003.

Daniel, Carolyn. Voracious Children: Who Eats Whom in Children's Literature. Routledge, 2006.
Voracious Children explores food and the way it is used to seduce, to please, and to coerce not only the characters within children's literature but also its readers. This book reveals that food in fiction does far, far more that just create verisimilitude or merely address greedy readers’ desires. The author argues that the food trope in children’s literature actually teaches children how to be human through the imperative to eat “good” food in a “proper” controlled manner. Examining topics such as childhood obesity and anorexia, the author demonstrates how children’s literature routinely attempts to regulate childhood eating practices and only awards subjectivity and agency to those characters who demonstrate “normal” appetites.

Davidson, Alan, and Helen Saberi, eds. The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy: Twenty Years of the Best Food Writing from the Journal Petit Propos Culinaires. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2002.
Over the years PPC seems never to have shied away from the strange and esoteric or important, for example, Sophie Coe’s series on Mayan foodways. It has always had an international scope and interest in the past and present.
Sandra Oliver, Gastronomica

Davidson, Alan.  Fish and Fish Dishes of Laos.  Blackawton, Totnes: Prospect Books, 1999.
The book was first published by the author in Vientiane, where he was British ambassador, in 1975. Laos is an inland country, the fish are freshwater species. A catalogue of many of those available in Lao markets is followed by some 50 recipes from Laos and its neighbours.

________. (ed.).  The Oxford Companion to Food.  Oxford: Oxford University, 1999.
The breadth of categories here is considerable . . . . But like every reader of this volume (I’m sure), I have some quibbles. Predictably enough, these have mostly to do with what’s in and what’s not, and with the editorial emphasis. The selection has a definite British tilt.
Colman Andrews, Gastronomica
See the review by Barbara Santich in Reviews and Articles by Members of the Research Centre.

________.  The Penguin Companion to Food.  Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2002.
Davis, Irving.  A Catalan Cookery Book: A Collection of Impossible Recipes.  Blackawton, Totnes: Prospect Books.

Davis, Lance E., Gallman, Robert E.  and Gleitter, Karen.  In Pursuit of Leviathan: Technology Institutions, Productivity, and Profits in American Whaling, 1816-1906.  Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Not even well chosen illustrations and maps can save this book from being a compilation of interest only to a narrow group of specialists.
René De La Pedraja, The American Historical Review

Davis, Belinda J. Homes Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Rather than thinking in terms of the amount of food that exists during a crisis, it is more useful to think about exactly who commands the food that does exist . . . . That at the height of wartime subsistence protests rich Germans had full bellies shows how the lack of food can also translate into power.
Kyri Watson Claflin, Gastronomica

Day, Ivan (ed.).  Eat, Drink & Be Merry–The British at Table, 1600-2000.  London: Wilson, 2000.

De Jean, Joan. The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication and Glamour. New York: Free Press, 2005.
The book is about the reign of Louis XIV. The author contends that the king and his court were essentially responsible for the style and sophistication that still characterize France. It’s an interesting idea.
James Reford, Gastronomica

Del Conte, Anna.  Gastronomy of Italy.  London: Chrysalis Books, 2001.
Praise for this masterwork has been universal.
PPC

Dembinska, Maria.  Food and Drink in Medieval Poland: Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
English translation of a book first published in 1963. Includes 35 reconstructed recipes.

Denker, Joel. The World on a Plate: A Tour Through the History of America’s Ethnic Cuisine. Boulder: Westview, 2003.
Denker traces the journeys of a wide array of foods, making clear by means of a range of individual food stories that Americans of many backgrounds owe a debt to the immigrants who brought these foods to their new home . . . . But for all of its assets as a piece of journalism, the book falls far short of being history, at least as a serious intellectual enterprise.
Hasia R. Diner, American Historical Review

De Silva, Cara, ed. In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezin. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.

Derry, Margaret.  Ontario’s Cattle Kingdom: Purebred Breeders and Their World, 1870-1920.  Buffalo NY: University of Toronto, 2001.
This book is not exactly riveting reading.
Books Blevins, American Historical Review

DeSalvo, Louise, and Edvige Giunta, eds. Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture. New York: The Feminist Press, 2003.
The editors have selected pieces that explore the contradiction Italian-American women face of gaining sustenance from a patriarchal culture that denigrates them.
Arlene Avakian, Gastronomica

Dietler, Michael and Hayden, Brian (eds.).  Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power.  Washington DC: Smithsonian Institute, 2001.
Feasts is a well-edited set of case studies set against a valuable discussion of contrasting theoretical approaches. However, in an academic world brimming with edited volumes, it is a pity that the editors did not write a book on feasting on their own account.
Brian Fagan, Gastronomica

Diner, Hasia R.  Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration.  Cambridge MA: Harvard University, 2001.
In this fascinating survey of the eating habits and influences of Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrants, Diner . . . charts with wit and graceful prose the similarities and differences between these three distinct groups as they encountered mainstream American culture.
Publishers Weekly

Dillon, Patrick. Gin: The Much Lamented Death of Madame Geneva. Boston: Justin, Charles & Co., 2003.
Dillon, a British architect and novelist with a passion for the history of London, has written a lively and detailed account of the gin craze, starting with the differences between the art of distilling liquor as opposed to brewing it.
Lisa Hiley, Gastronomica

Dixon, Jane.  The Changing Chicken: Chooks, Cooks and Culinary Culture.  Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2002.
The strength of Jane Dixon's book is generated firstly from its disciplinary and theoretical underpinnings and secondly via its focus on chicken meat as a commodity. Through an analysis of cultural and economic ‘circuits' the author shows how components of the food system hang together by using a view from inside rather than outside the system. All this in the service of the author's primary objective of explaining how culinary cultures change.
Patricia Crotty

Dolphijn, Rick. Foodscapes: Toward a Deleuzian Ehtics of Consumption. Delft: Eburon Publishers, 2004.
Although he neglects explicitly to define his titular concept, readers quickly come to understand that, for Dolphijn, foodscapes are processes by which food, through its divers representations and consumption (or avoidance thereof), informs individual and global perceptions of identity, place, health, and power, among other concepts.
Pauline Adema, Gastronomica

Dorje, Rinjing.  Food in Tibetan Life.  Blackawton, Totnes: Prospect Books.
A collection of 'pure' Tibetan recipes, prefaced by ten chapters which describe Tibetan food habits.
Duis, Perry R.  The Saloon: Public Drinking in Chicago and Boston, 1880-1920.  Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Donahue, Brian. The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
This is a major work of environmental history. Donahue has fashioned a brilliant ecological narrative with powerful implications for our understanding not only of early American agriculture but also of such significant subjects as the transmission of English practices in the New World, the character of family and community in the world the Puritans made, and the attitudes and practices that enabled these New Englanders to forge a complex, attentive, and sustainable relationship with nature.
Robert A. Gross, American Historical Review

Donahue, John F. The Roman Community at Table during the Principate. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
The professional historian may well wonder why this book was written. Donahue repeatedly scores three basic points. Two of these are mere common sense. His third finding, that the Roman elite doled out unequal portions at festal events in order to acknowledge and reinforce class distinctions, is hardly new.
John K. Evans, American Historical Review

Donkin, R. A. Between East and West: The Moluccas and the Traffic in Spices up to the Arrival of Europeans. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2003.

Dronin, Nikolai M., and Edward G. Bellinger. Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 1900-1990: The Interaction of Climate and Agricultural Policy and Their Effect on Food Problems. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005.
This book is a thorough and systematic attempt to assess the impact of climatic difficulties on Russian and Soviet agriculture since the late nineteenth century. It is written by two environmental historians.
David Christian, American Historical Review

Drouard, Alain. Histoire des cuisiniers en France, XIXe-XXe siècle. Paris: CNRS Editions, 2004.
The work is not, as one might expect, a compilation of dry erudition but a surprisingly exciting Paris-centered account of an emerging profession’s fight for status, recognition, and the economic advantages that come in tow.
Beatrice Fink, Gastronomica

Drowne, Kathleen. Spirits of Defiance: National Prohibition and Jazz Age Literature, 1920-1933. Columbia: Ohio State University, 2005.
Drowne has done an excellent job of compiling literary references to Prohibition-era drink culture, something no one has previously done in comparable detail. She provides insightful and colourful commentary on her sources, particularly regarding how class, race, and gender figured into the drinking experiences described in contemporary fiction.
Madelon Powers, American Historical Review

Duncan, Dorothy. Canadians at Table: Food, Fellowship, and Folklore. A Culinary History of Canada. Toronto: Dundurn, 2006.

Dunmire, William W. Gardens of New Spain: How Mediterranean Plants and Foods Changed America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004.

DuPuis, E. Melanie. Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Drink. New York: New York University Press, 2002.
DuPuis’ central point—that food policies are shaped by political as well as economic factors, and that milk’s high status in America is neither the product of its inherent perfection or of a big business conspiracy—is hardly surprising.
Harvey Levenstein, American Historical Review

Dyson, Laurel Evelyn.  How to Cook a Galah: Celebrating Australia's Culinary Heritage.  South Melbourne: Lothian Books, 2002.
This is an important book. It does not fit comfortably into the category 'recipe book' nor is it just 'food history' and its certainly not merely nostalgia for food past. Laurel Dyson has written a book which weaves together stories from Australian history, biographical and autobiographical accounts and recipes from Australia's colonial and more recent past. It stands out from other Australian books which traverse similar territory.
Patricia Crotty

Edge, John T. Donuts: An American Passion. New York: Penguin Group, 2006.
Traces the development of the donut from seasonal ethnic treat to proletarian breakfast fare.

Edgerton-Tarpley, Kathryn. Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth-Century China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Edmunds, Lowell.  Martini, Straight Up: The Classic American Cocktail.  Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, revised edition, 1999.

Effros, Bonnie.  Creating Community with Food and Drink in Merovingian Gaul.  Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.
Egerton, John (ed.).  Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of South Food Writing.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2002.

Ellis, Markman. The Coffee House: A Cultural History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2004.
Ellis has written a useful revisionist history of the coffeehouse, amending the story that prior social and cultural historians have given us.
Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft, Gastronomica

Ellis, William.  The Country Housewife's Family Companion [1750].  Blackawton, Totnes: Prospect Books, 2000.
William Ellis lived and farmed at Little Gaddesden in Hertfordshire, although he was originally a London brewer. Ellis wrote about the farm and how to make money from its produce or how to cook it.

Ettlinger, Steve. Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats. New York: Penguin, 2007.

Eubanks, Mary W.  Corn in Clay: Maize Paleoethnobotany in Pre-Columbian Art.  Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999.
Corn in Clay offers an interesting look across disciplines at the Pre-Columbian evidence for corn, or maize.
Daphne Derven, Gastronomica

Faas, Patrick.  Around the Table of the Romans: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome.  Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.

Fegan, Melissa.  Literature and the Irish Famine, 1845-1919.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Explores the famine’s legacy to literature, tracing it in the work of contemporary writers and their successors, down to 1919.

Fernández-Armesto, Felipe.  Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food.  New York: Free Press, 2002.
I would, I fear, be an argumentative and disruptive guest at Fernández-Armesto’s dinner table.
Rachel Laudan, Gastronomica

Ferray, Jeannette. Out of the Kitchen: Adventures of a Food Writer. Mckinleyville: John Daniel & Co., 2004.

Ferrières, Madeleine. Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Demonstrates that humans have always been preoccupied with food in one way or another, arguing that in modern times fundamental fears about starvation have been replaced with worries over health risks.
Barbara Haber

Fisher, M. F. K. A Stew or a Story: An Assortment of Short Works by M. F. K. Fisher. Joan Reardon, ed. Emeryville: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2006.
Illuminates gastronomy as a means of self-construction as well as a powerful source of wisdom and imagination.
Alice McLean, Gastronomica

Fitzgerald, Seamus.  Mackerel and the Making of Baltimore, Co. Cork, 1879-1913.  Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999.

Flandrin, Jean-Louis.  L’ordre des mets.  Paris: Odile Jacob, 2002.
The book aims to decode the descriptions of meals served à la française and to trace how their imbedded structure, and its development over time, was translated to the new form of service à la russe.
PPC

Flandrin, Jean-Louis. Arranging the Meal: A History of Table Service in France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
English translation of L’ordre des mets.

Flandrin, Jean-Louis and Montanari, Massimo (eds.).  Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
This uneven collection of essays, written by thirty-eight different contributors, is made coherent and valuable by means of its chronological structure and by the introductions to the various historical periods.
Alice Arndt, Gastronomica

Fleming, Stuart J. Vinum: The Story of Roman Wine. Glen Mills: Art Flair, 2001.
As an archaeologist with a special knowledge of archaeochemistry and of the history of glass, Fleming brings useful expertise to this field.
Andrew Dalby, Gastronomica

Floyd, Janet, and Laurel Forster, eds. The Recipe Reader. London: Ashgate Press, 2004.
Despite the work already done to uncover the many ways that recipes create and lend meaning to other forms of discourse, this book contributes some new subjects for analysis and presents new perspectives on works many of us have read before.
Anne Bower, Gastronomica

Food in the Arts: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 1998.  Blackawton, Totnes: Prospect Books.

Forth, Christopher E., and Ana Carden-Coyne, eds. Cultures of the Abdomen: Diet, Digestion, and Fat in the Modern World. New York: Palgrave, 2004.

Foss-Mollan, Kate.  Hard Water: Politics and Water Supply in Milwaukee, 1870-1995.  West Lafayette IN: Purdue University, 2001.

Fowler, Damon Lee, ed. Dining at Monticello: In Good Taste and Abundance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
This beautifully produced volume offers an introduction to the culinary history of Thomas Jefferson and his home, Monticello, through a series of food history essays and recipes.
Mitchell McNaylor, Gastronomica

Fowler, P. J.  Farming in the British Isles in the First Millennium AD.  Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2002.
Assembles and analyzes the latest evidence on farms, fields, technology, food, diet and society.
Frederic, Paul B.  Canning Gold: Northern New England’s Sweet Corn Industry: A Historical Geography.  Lanham MD: University Press of America, 2002.

Fox, Harold.  The Evolution of the Fishing Village: Landscape and Society along the South Devon Coast, 1086-1550.  Oxford: Leopard’s Head Press, 2002.
This is a learned yet accessible account of the development of fishing villages.
PPC

Freedman, P., Food: The History of Taste. London: Thames & Hudson, 2007.
Shows us that, since Homer, the foods we eat have reflected our culture’s most closely held values and understanding of our place in the world. The book reminds us that taste is an essential of civilization, and that it is something worth protecting from the homogenizing force of the modern, global food supply. A useful, culturally wide-ranging text, profusely illustrated. No bibliography (includes Further Reading).

Fuller, Robert C.  Religion and Wine: A Cultural History of Wine Drinking in the United States.  Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 2000.
[The author] examines not only the ways in which religious prohibitions of wine arose but also the production of wine by various religious organizations.
Library Journal

Eagleton, Janet, and Rosemary Hasner. The Maple Syrup Book. Erin: Boston Mills Press, 2006.

Ecott, Tom. Vanilla: Travels in Search of the Ice Cream Orchid. New York: Grove Press, 2004.

Edlin, Abraham. A Treatise on the Art of Bread-Making: Wherein, The Mealing Trade, Assize Laws, and Every Circumstance Connected With the Art, is Particularly Examined [1805]. Devon: Prospect Books, 2004.
Written by a nineteenth-century medical practitioner, the author’s preface explains the book grew out of a presentation he made to fellow doctors who met weekly at the Theater of Guy’s Hospital in London, where they gathered to share their latest exciting findings with each other and their students.
Peter Reinhart, Gastronomica

Eiche, Sabine. Presenting the Turkey: The Fabulous Story of a Flamboyant and Flavourful Bird. Florence: Centro Di, 2004.
In this delightful book art historian Sabine Eiche traces the fascinating history of the turkey, which originated in North America.
Andrew F. Smith, Gastronomica

Elliot, Alistair, trans. Roman Food Poems: A Modern Translation. Devon: Prospect Books, 2003.
The poems are in general well chosen, covering a broad spectrum of Roman life and avoiding the easy temptation of including too many poems about elite banquets or drinking parties. The translations are very fine indeed.
Peter O’Neill, Gastronomica

Farquhar, Judith. Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
Although Appetites ranges widely, it is held together by the twin themes of food and sex. For anyone interested not only in how the transformation of China since the death of Mao manifests itself on the ground level but also in the significance of these changes, this is a vital text and a good entry point on the topic.
Chris Berry, Gastronomica

Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst. Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French Cuisine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Ferguson set out to explore why French cuisine seems to play a particularly key role in defining modern France, both to the French and to the rest of the world. Along the way, she treats us to a tour through the French imaginary, highlighting both the intimacy and intelligence of French culinary discourse.
Erica Peters, Food, Culture, and Society

Fine, Gary Alan. Morel Tales: The Culture of Mushrooming. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Fischer, Edward F., and Peter Benson. Broccoli and Desire: Global Connections and Maya Struggles in Postwar Guatemala. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.
In a surprising look at the hidden world of broccoli, this richly-drawn ethnography traces the global commodity chain between U.S. consumer and Maya farmer, examining the connections between desire and material production.

Fitzgerald, Deborah. Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
This book is the first to explain systematically the influence of industrialization on American agriculture . . . . Fitzgerald’s emphasis on the ideal makes the book seem somewhat like an intellectual history. Yet, as a historian of technology, she highlights the engineers and economist who grounded the ideal.
Mark Fiege, American Historical Review

Fletcher, Nichola. Charlemagne’s Tablecloth: A Piquant History of Feasting. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2005.
Provides an eclectic, enthusiastic introduction to the history of the feast, focusing mainly on the ritual and celebratory aspects of the shared table.
Jason Sholl, Gastronomica

Flynn, Karen. Food, Culture, and Survival in an African City. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
An ethnographic study of the cultural economy of food provisioning in Mwanza, Tanzania, in the early 1990s. It provides a window into the networks and food-acquisition strategies used by several hundred individuals, from market vendors and wealthy families to street children and adults in a contemporary urban Africa setting.
Fran Osseo-Asare, Food, Culture, and Society

Fogel, Robert William. The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100: Europe, America, and the Third World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Fowler, Peter. Farming in the First Millennium AD: British Agriculture between Julius Caesar and William the Conqueror. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Freeman, June. The Making of the Modern Kitchen: A Cultural History. Oxford: Berg, 2004.
Herein lies the book’s central problem: how does one define terms like “values,” taste,” and “fashion,” and how are these concepts formed? In her desire to allow the consumer a maximum degree of individuality, Freeman fails to consider seriously the myriad factors that shape such aesthetic and moral preferences.
Jennifer Raab, Gastronomica

Frick, John W. Theatre, Culture and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Frick, in this carefully researched work, examines the “cultural centrality of liquor” in the nineteenth century, the corresponding mass social movements formed to control or eradicate strong drink, and the dizzying array of temperance dramas and theatrical performances that sprang up to advance the “spirit of reform.”
John Hanners, American Historical Review

Friedberg, Suzanne. French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004.
Friedberg’s research goes a long way toward showing how present production and export practices in both post-colonial Burkino Faso and Zambia continue to be affected by the historical power of the wealthy nations who import their produce.
Riva Soucie, Gastronomica

Fussell, Betty. Masters of American Cookery: M. F. K. Fisher, James Beard, Craig Claiborne, Julia Child. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

Gabaccia, Donna R.  We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans.  Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
We Are What We Eat is a complex tale of ethnic mingling and borrowing, of entrepreneurship and connoisseurship, of food as a social and political symbol and weapon, and a history of the American culinary tradition of multiculturalism.

Gabler, James M. An Evening with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson: Dinner, Wine, and Conversation. Palm Beach: Bacchus Press, 2006.

Garrier, Gilbert.  Historie social et culturelle du vin.  Paris: Larousse-Bordas, 1998.
A cheaper edition of the 1995 original. Not a book anyone interested in wine should be without.
PPC

Germov, John and Williams, Lauren.  A Sociology of Food and Nutrition: Introducing the Social Appetite.  Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1999.
See the review by Michael Symons in Reviews and Articles by Members of the Research Centre.

Gigante, Denise. Taste: A Literary History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Gigante’s learned and erudite study is not merely a literary history of taste, it turns out, but an engaging philosophical and cultural history as well.
Ronald Le Blanc, Gastronomica

Glants, Musya and Toombe, Joyce (eds.).  Food in Russian History and Culture.  Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Stovelore in Russian Folklife; Food in the Rus' Primary Chronicle; Food in Catherinian St. Petersburg; Forced Hunger and Rational Restraint in Russian Peasant Culture at the Turn of the Century; Tolstoy's Way of No Flesh: Abstinence, Vegetarianism, and Christian Physiology; Is Hay Only for Horses? Highlights of Russian Vegetarianism at the Turn of the Century; An Appetite for Power: Predators, Carnivores, and Cannibals in Dostoevsky's Fiction; Strawberries and Chocolate: Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam, and the Plight of the Hungry Poet; Communal Dining and State Cafeterias in Moscow and Petrograd, 1917-1921; The Beginnings of Soviet Culinary Arts; Food and National Identity in Soviet Armenia; Food as Art: Painting in Late Soviet Russia.
Glanville, Philippa and Young, Hilary (eds.).  Elegant Eating: Four Hundred Years of Dining in Style.  V & A Publications, 2002.
This book, by means of handsome illustrations and concentrated text, attacks the history of cookery via the hardware of the table.
PPS

Gold, Barbara K., and John F. Donahue (eds.) Roman Dining. A special edition of the American Journal of Philology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
This is a high-quality collection of essays that those interested in Roman food and Roman social history will want to consult. General readers, however, will perhaps find it somewhat too specialized in nature and might be advised to begin their enquiries into Roman dining elsewhere.
Peter O’Neill, Gastronomica

Goldstein, Darra.  The Georgian Feast: The Vibrant Culture and Savory food of the Republic of Georgia.  Berkeley: University of California, 1999.
This superbly written book is part ethnography, part geography, and part cookbook. Ms. Goldstein describes the rugged topography and turbulent history of this region that was once a crossroad of trade between Asia and Europe. These cultural influences, along with a healthy variety of food-producing environments, have led to a rich native cuisine.
Anthony Dias Blue

Goldstein, Darra, and Kathrin Merkle, eds. Culinary Cultures of Europe: Identity, Diversity and Dialogue. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, 2005.
This collection of essays reflects many of the important transitions through which 40 European countries have passed, and in this sense it is a history book. It is also a colourful celebration of an enormously rich part of our cultural heritage.

Golden, Janet. Message in a Bottle: The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Le goût: Actes du colloque.  Dijon: Campus Universitaire, 1998.
This massive volume, international in authorship, contains no fewer than 106 papers on a wide range of topics which deal with one or other aspect of Taste. Many are scientific papers about the chemistry and mechanisms of taste. Many others have to do with the evolution of national and regional tastes.
PPC

Goode, Jamie. The Science of Wine: From Vine to Glass. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
It offers in-depth explanations on numerous aspects of the biology, physics, and chemistry of wine, not to mention the history of winemaking and consumption from rudimentary ancient practices to current medical research.
Sharon Bowman, Gastronomica

Goyens, Tom. Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008.
Shows anarchism focused in beer halls and saloons where political meetings, public lectures, discussion circles, fund-raising events, and theater groups were held.

Grant, Mark.  Galen on Food and Diet.  London: Routledge, 2000.
No slouch Galen, and this translation makes him readable. His catalogue of foods is wide-ranging and informative. Good stuff.
PPC

Grant, Michael Johnston.  Down and Out on the Family Farm: Rural Rehabilitation on the Great Plains, 1929-1945.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2002.

Gratzer, Walter. Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Reviewers applaud the book’s breadth yet chronicle errors large and small; the overall impression is one of science by anecdote or “Readers Digest-style synopses.”
Ellen J. Fried, Gastronomica

Graves, Tomás.  Bread & Oil: Majorcan Culture's Last Stand.  Blackawton: Prospect Books, 2000.
See the review by Barbara Santich in Reviews and Articles by Members of the Research Centre

Gray, Patience. The Centaur’s Kitchen: A Book of French, Italian, Greek and Catalan Dishes for Ships’ Cooks on the Blue Funnel Line (Totnes: Prospect Books, 2005), pp. 137.

The Australian connection to this book is not so much its Mediterranean focus but rather the Centaur herself, which as one of the ships of the Blue Funnel fleet carried passengers and livestock between Fremantle and Singapore in the 1960s. Patience Gray delivered her typescript to the company in 1964 but, as a private commission for the benefit of the Chinese cooks on the Centaur, it was never published. Written after her collaboration with Primrose Boyd, Plats du Jour (1957), it abandons a French theme in favour of a more eclectic and certainly more personal collection of recipes, all written from a thoroughly practical viewpoint and all perfectly appropriate to a domestic kitchen today (Barbara Santich).

Gray, Peter.  Famine, Land and Politics: British Government and Irish Society, 1843-50.  Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999.
In this outstanding book, Peter Gray examines the politics of Britain's policies toward Ireland in the 1840s. He analyzes the attitudes of English political society toward the Irish land question in the years before and during the Great Famine. He portrays the reaction of politicians to the collapse of the potato harvest from its first failure in the autumn of 1845.
Samuel Clark, American Historical Review

Grew, Raymond (ed.).  Food in Global History.  Boulder: Westview Press, 1999.

Grewe, Rudolph and Hieatt, Constance B. (eds.) and (trans.).  Libellus de Arte Coquinaria: An Early Northern Cookery Book.  Tempe AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2001.
One of the earliest medieval works devoted to cooking, dating from before 1300.

Gribben, Arthur (ed.).  The Great Famine and the Irish Diaspora in America.  Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.

Gursoy, Deniz. Turkish Cuisine in Historical Perspective. Istanbul: Oglak Guzel Kitaplar, 2006. Joyce Mathews. Trans. A richly illustrated work, including recipes. 

Guthman, Julie. Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Everyone interested in food policy should read this book, especially if interested in how public policy, agricultural financial structures, consumer demand, and media-and-marketing concepts can dictate the processes of food production.
Janet Chrzan, Food, Culture, and Society

Guinness, Michelle.  Guinness Spirit.  London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1999.

Gutierrez, C. Paige.  Cajun Foodways.  Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1992.

Gutzke, David W. Pubs and Progressives: Reinventing the Public House in England, 1896-1960. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005.

Guy, Kolleen M.  When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2002.  

Haber, Barbara.  From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals.  New York: Free Press,2002.

Halliday, James. Wine Atlas of Australia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Hannah, Jack.  You Will Not Taste Death: Jesus and Epicureanism.  Mansfield OH: Frank Publishing, 1997.
Hannah argues that the principles of Jesus were nearer to Epicureanism than to Judaism, Cynicism, or Stoicism, yet Epicureanism was the philosophy most disdained by Jewish and, later, Christian teachers because of its rejection of Providence and human immortality. While Epicureans tried to give comfort by saying, "Death is nothing to us," Jesus favored the expression, "You will not taste death."

Hanrahan, Maura and Ewtushik, Marg.  A Veritable Scoff: Sources on Foodways and Nutrition in Newfoundland and Labrador.  St. John’s NF: Flanker Press, 2002.

Harvey, Mark, Quilley, S., and Beynon, H.  Exploring the Tomato: Transformations of Nature, Society and Economy.  Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003.
The book explores the changing character of tomato from Aztec salsa to modern mass consumption, looking at how it is cultivated, distributed, traded, and consumed.

Harbury, Katharine E. Colonial Virginia’s Cooking Dynasty. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 2003.
Commentary on two early manuals of food preparation and entertaining in colonial America.

Harvey, Mark, Andrew McMeekin, and Alan Warde, eds. Qualities of Food. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.
This multidisciplinary, comparative work focuses on the field of food and broadly, to quote from the preface, on ‘various aspects of production and consumption.’ A collaborative effort produced as a result of a UK Economic and Social Research Council workshop held in 2002, the collection brings together essays from eminent contemporary social science theorists including Mara Miele, Alan Warde, Jukka Gronow, and Geneviève Teil. Tying the varied approaches and perspectives is a common theme, food quality.
Roger Haden

Hassan, Fekri A. (ed.).  Droughts, Food and Culture: Ecological Change and Food Security in Africa’s Later Prehistory.  Kluwer Academic, 2002.

Hassan, John.  A History of Water in Modern England.  New York: Manchester University, 1998.
Histories of water usage, supply, and management are rare. This book is remarkable for being interdisciplinary in the best sense.
Norman Pearson, American Historical Review

Hayes, Joanne Lamb.  Grandma’s Wartime Kitchen: World War II and the Way We Cooked.  New York: St. Martin’s, 2000.

Heller, Tamar, and Patricia Moran, eds. Scenes of the Apple: Food and the Female Body in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003
Eve’s eating of the apple forever links women to an ambiguous legacy, marking her within the patriarchal tradition as temptress yet also revealing the interconnection of appetite, oral tendencies, sexual desire, risk, and knowledge that distinguishes the “feminine” relation to eating. The essays in the collection explore various aspects of this connection.
Kathryn R. Kent, Gastronomica

Helstosky, Carol F. Garlic and Oil: Food and Politics in Italy. New York: Palgrave, 2006.
Helstosky shows that new war industries in Italy, as well as that nation’s participation in Allied food programs, led to worker prosperity and increased consumption of foods that had not been part of the popular diet before the war. Even with rampant inflation, the popular classes ate better than had ever been possible.
Kyri Watson Claflin, Gastronomica

Hemphill, Ian. The Spice and Herb Bible (second edition). n.p: Robert Rose, 2006.
Despite my quibbles, this encyclopaedic work is a good culinary reference for exploring the rich spectrum of herbs and spices, and a definitive resource for aspiring spice merchants.
Ammini Ramachandran, Gastronomica

Henisch, Bridget Ann.  The Medieval Calendar.  Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.
It is a serious work offering new analysis and insight but presented with the lightness of touch and the deft wit for which the author is renowned.
PPS

Herlihy, Patricia.  The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia.  New York: Oxford University, 2001.
This book examines the prevalence of alcohol in Russian social, economic, religious, and political life. Herlihy looks at how the state, the church the military, doctors, lay societies, and the czar all tried to battle the problem of overconsumption of alcohol.

Herman, Judith, and Marguerite Shalett Herman, The Cornucopia: Being a Kitchen Entertainment and Cookbook. New Edition. Huntington Library Press, 2005.

Heuzenroeder, Angela.  Barossa Food.  Kent Town SA: Wakefield Press, 1999.
See the review by Barbara Santich in Reviews and Articles by Members of the Research Centre.

Hietala, Marjatta, and Tania Vahtikari, eds. The Landscape of Food: The Food Relationship of Town and Country in Modern Times. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. 2003.

Hionidouo, Violetta. Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 1941-1944. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Hoffmann, Richard C.  Fisher's Craft and Lettered Art: Tracts on Fishing from the End of the Middle Ages.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

Hodgson, Godfrey. A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving. New York: Public Affairs, 2006.
Where the book could have been a fascinating exploration of the creation of a national symbol, it ends up being instead a layman’s history of the Pilgrim experience—useful and informative, but a bit dryer and blander than a Thanksgiving feast should be.
Margot Kaminski, Gastronomica

Hogan, David Gerard.  Selling 'em by the Sack: White Castle and the Creation of American Food. New York: New York University Press, 1997.
Hogan tells the story of the White Castle fast-food restaurant chain from its 1921 beginnings to it present position as a small regional competitor with such major fast-food hamburger chains as McDonald's and Burger King. . . . The book is most successful as a boosterish corporate history.
Amy Bentley, American Historical Review

Hohenegger, Beatrice. Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006.

Holt, Georgina, and Matthew Reed, eds. Sociological Perspectives of Organic Agriculture: From Pioneer to Policy. Oxford: CABI International, 2006.
The essays in this book, taken from both economists and social scientists, are divided into five main themes: organic movements in northwest Europe, organic food quality and the consumer, problems for organic farmers around the globe, principles and practices of organic farming, and new directions for organic sector development.
Fiona Louden, Food, Culture, and Society

Holt, Mack P. (ed.). A Social and Cultural History of Alcohol. Oxford: Berg, 2006. This timely collection is an anthology of writing from scholars working in the field of drink and beverage history, and includes our own A. Lynn Martin, Mack Holt, Ken Albala. Diane Kirkby, Charles Ludington, Kim Munholland, Thomas Brennan, and others.

Hooker, William. Pomona Londinensis. Oakland: Octavo Editions, 2003.
Painted by William Hooker between 1813 and 1818, Pomona Londinensis was a field guide to the different fruits grown in London at that time. This edition opens with two well-written essays by botany historian Ian Jackson.
Craig Libman, Gastronomica

Hopley, Claire.  New England Cooking.  Lee MA: Berkshire House, 2001.
A book suffused with history.
PPC

Horn, Tammy. Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation. The University Press of Kentucky, 2005.
Traces the many paths of honey bee and human interaction in American and weaves them together for a colorful, intimate, and in-depth tale that grandly encompasses keen inventions, slavery, religion, war, economics, politics, and the global marketplace.
Kim Flottum, BeeCulture

Horowitz, Roger. Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
An important, unique, and splendidly written introduction to the history of meat production, distribution, and consumption in America.
Warren Belasco

Jamie Horwitz and Pauline Singley (eds.) Eating Architecture. MIT Press, 2004. "...an immensely original and fascinating work" (John Urry).

Hosking, Richard.  At the Japanese Table.  Hong Kong: Oxford University, 2000.
[This] is a useful book, and probably the best single-volume introduction to Japanese cuisine currently available. However, explanations of how the Japanese acquired their unique habits and preferences are limited.
John Kochevar, Gastronomica

Hudgins, Sharon. The Other Side of Russia: A Slice of Life in Siberia and the Russian Far East. Texas A & M University Press, 2003, paperback edition 2004.
This award-winning book covers daily life in the post-Soviet era, and her special interest in foods and foodways is apparent in her descriptions of multi-course meals washed down with champagne and vodka, often eaten by candlelight when the electricity failed.

Hughes, Kathryn. The Short Times and Long Life of Mrs. Beeton. New York: Random House, 2006.
In her extensive research Hughes found that Mrs. Beeton was, in fact, a plagiarist who had copied chunks of information and recipes from other sources. “Although she was a plagiarist she was adding value: She was an extraordinary innovator.”
Patsy Iddison, Gastronomica

Hughes-Hallet, Penelope. The Immortal Dinner: A Famous Evening of Genius and Laughter in Literary London, 1817.  Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 2002.
The host was Benjamin Robert Haydon, the English history painter . . . .He gave this party to introduce the young and unknown John Keats to the elder poet William Wordsworth.
Elizabeth Riely, Gastronomica

Hundley, Norris Jr.  The Great Thirst: Californians and Water–A History.  Berkeley: University of California, 2000.
[Hundley] has given the reader a rich history buttressed with admirable objectivity. Above all, he has taken a subject of complexity and give it clarity.
Robert W. Righter, American Historical Review

Inness, Sherrie A. (ed.).  Kitchen Culture in America: Popular Representations of Food, Gender, and Race.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2001.

________.  Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture.  Iowa City: University of Iowa, 2000.
By exploring popular media, including cookbooks, magazines, and advertisements, Dinner Roles explores the relationship between women and food developed during the first half of the twentieth century.

________.  Secret Ingredients: Race, Gender and Class at the Dinner Table. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Inness’s arguments are basically two: that food writing and food talk are sites of cultural transformation and empowerment and that even seemingly recuperative, antifeminist depictions of home cookery can offer empowerment.
Gwen Hyman, Gastronomica

Issenberg, Sasha. The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy. New York: Penguin, 2007. Jacobs, Marc, and Peter Scholliers, eds. Eating Out in Europe: Picnics, Gourmet Dining and Snacks since the Late Eighteenth Century. New York: Berg, 2003.

Jakle, John A. and Sculle, Keith A.  Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
A survey of the origins, architecture, and commercial growth of wayside eateries in the United States over the past 100 years. The authors study the impact of the automobile on the restaurant business, how roadside restaurants came into their own, how the drive-in and drive-through came about, how the great franchises from White Castle to McDonald's came into existence and how roadside architecture and social mores were revolutionized.
Jekyll, Agnes.  Kitchen Essays.  London: Persephone Books, 2001.
This was first published in 1922, as a collection of pieces from The Times written by the sister-in-law of the great gardener Gertrude Jekyll.
PPC

James, Kenneth. Escoffier: King of Chefs. London: Hambledon and London, 2003.
What makes this book a noteworthy addition to the culinary history canon and different from other Escoffier accounts is the inclusion of what the author refers to as “interludes.” Punctuating the eighteen chapters that constitute the chef’s life story are seventeen freestanding essay-like mini-chapters on a variety of topics pertaining in varying degrees to the chapters preceding them.
Alexandra Leaf, Gastronomica

Jawary, Nita Tiffaha. The Perpetual Table: Cuisine of Judeo-Babylon and Old Baghdad (A CD-Rom of Food Art Video Music; stocklists can be found at www.nita.com.au/perp.html)
The Perpetual Table is an insight into the cuisine of the Judeo-Babylonian community of Old Baghdad. This cuisine reflects the different cooking styles of the north and south as well as conforming to Judaic food laws.  From the north came Turkish cooking practices and the use of sweet spices.  The south was influenced by both Persia and India with the custom of using dried fruits to give a sweet and sour flavour to dishes coming from Persia and hot chili dishes coming from India.
Dani Signorini

Jefford, Andrew. Peat, Smoke and Spirit: A Portrait of Islay and its Whiskies. London: Headline Book Publishing, 2004.
The ‘Introduction’ brings the reader to Islay via an airplane flight from Glasgow. It contains such purple prose that I seriously wondered if I could bear to read the entire book. What follows is ‘A word or two on whisky,’ twenty-one pages of such dense technical detail that I looked forward to more purple prose. An indication of the technical detail is the twelve-page glossary, with about one-fourth of one page explaining the meaning of foreshots. Then come eight chapters on Islay’s geography, early and recent history, peat, weather, nature, shipwrecks, and modern situation. In between each of these eight chapters is a ‘Glass,’ in effect a chapter, on one of the distilleries—a total of seven ‘Glasses’ in alphabetical order.
A. Lynn Martin

Jenkins, Virginia Scott.  Bananas: An American History.  Herndon VA: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.
Before 1880 most Americans had never seen a banana, but this exotic fruit quickly became a mainstay of jokes and songs, as well as a healthy staple of the modern American diet. Jenkins demonstrates how growers, importers, and promoters helped this fruit gain a secure place in the nation’s culture and grocery lists.

Jiménez, Patricia Varga. Con sabor a tertulia: Historia del consumo del café en Costa Rica (1840-1940). San José: Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 2004.
The spread of coffee production depended largely on international markets, but as this elegant and innovative book shows, local consumption did not simply percolate down from foreign elites. Jiménez demonstrates that Costa Rica developed a unique coffee culture, one that also provides invaluable comparative perspective on consumption patterns in Europe and the United States.
Jeffrey M. Pilcher, American Historical Review

Jing, Jun (ed.).  Feeding China’s Little Emperors: Food, Children, and Social Change.  Stanford: Stanford University, 2000.
[This book covers] everything children now eat, from infant formulas to fast foods and snacks. And it goes beyond the consideration of foods to the impact of public policies and modernization of Chinese children’s foods and eating patterns.
Nancy Jervis, Gastronomica

Johnson, Hugh. A Life Uncorked. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Part memoir, part lesson board, part comedy and part tragedy, the book is loaded with Johnson’s inimitable style, one that practically reads itself.

Jung, Moon-Ho. Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Jutte, Robert. History of the senses : from antiquity to cyberspace. Trans. James Lynn. Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA, USA : Polity, 2005.
This book is focussed on Germany, or rather on German history and data derived from Germany, in a nonetheless broad-based approach to the senses which begins with the ancient world and tracks in a more or less chronological fashion, the twists and turns of "the senses" and their cultural construction. As part of this process, changes to taste and its relationship with science, technology, society and culture are dealt with admiraly by Jütte. Particularly useful in this context is Jütte's Europe-specific analysis which provides a wealth of scholarly references and insights providing potential contrast with changes in other countries and cultures. Arguably "the senses" require more research of a cross-cultural type. Jütte gives us a taste of the potential.

Johannsen, Kristin. Ginseng Dreams: The Secret World of America’s Most Valuable Plant. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006.

Kamp, David. The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation. New York: Broadway Books, 2006.
An attempt to solidify the story of America’s gastronomical growth over the past fifty years. Kamp endeavors to encompass the overall progress of American gourmet culture without becoming mired in one central food figure or particular food trend.
Sabrina Small, Food, Culture, and Society

Kaplan, Steven Laurence. Good Bread is Back: A Contemporary History of French Bread, the Way It Is Made, and the People Who Make It. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Katz, Sandor Ellis. The Revolution Will Not Be Mircrowaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2006.
This insider’s guide is an excellent introduction to the burgeoning underground food movement in North America.
Katherine Dillon, Gastronomica

Katz, Solomon H., and William Woys Weaver, eds., Encyclopedia of Food and Culture: Scribner Library of Daily Life. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003.
More bothersome to me than this perhaps unavoidable Western tilt is a certain blandness that smothers the writing whenever the topic is a contentious one. Controversial or not, every subject deserves all the accuracy that research can muster, but when the going gets touch, these volumes start sounding like a junior high civics text.
Laura Shapiro, Gastronomica

Kaufman, Cathy K. Cooking in Ancient Civilizations. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006.

Keay, John. The Spice Route: A History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Keay, John. The Spice Route: A History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Keay’s extensive narrative on the spice trade and the circuitous routes it has traversed for thousands of years is a scholarly work as well as a great read for anyone remotely interested in the history of food.
Ian Hemphill, Gastronomica

Kelly, Ian. Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Carême, the First Celebrity Chef. New York: Walker & Company, 2004.
The book offers a fascinating look not only at Carême’s personal life but also at the lives of those for whom he cooked. At the end the reader is left with a strong sense of the difference between Carême’s celebrity and that of the chefs working today: more than a century after his death, Carême’s influence remains palpable, while modern celebrity chefs are likely to disappear as soon as their ratings drop.
Carolyn Chapman, Gastronomica

Khare, R. S. (ed.).  The Eternal Food: Gastronomic Ideas and Experiences of Hindus and Buddhists.  Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Kimbrell, Andrew (ed.). Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. Washington: Covelo, 2002.
The book includes photographs of varieties of fruits and vegetables that most people have never seen, the survivors of mass extinctions caused by monoculture agriculture. Eighty to 90 percent of tomato, lettuce, corn