Food and Wine : History

Some have called Sacred Harp singing America’s earliest music. This powerful nondenominational religious singing, part of a deeply held Southern culture, has spread throughout the nation over the past two centuries. In A Sacred Feast, Kathryn Eastburn journeys into the community of Sacred Harp singers across the country and introduces readers to the curious glories of a tradition that is practiced today just as it was two hundred years ago. more...

Price: $24.95

Award-winning New York Times–bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America, before the national highway system brought the country closer together, before chain restaurants imposed uniformity and low quality, and before the Frigidaire meant frozen food in mass quantities. Back then, the nation’s food was seasonal, regional, traditional, and it helped form and reflect the distinct character, attitudes, and customs of those who ate it. In the 1930s, with the country gripped in the Great Depression and millions of Americans struggling to get by, President Roosevelt created the Federal Writers’ Project under the New Deal as a make-work initiative for authors. Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Nelson Algren were among the writers dispatched across the country to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people at a moment in time right before they began to disappear. The project, called “America Eats,” was abandoned in the early 1940s because of the war, and never resumed. The Food of a Younger Land unearths this forgotten literary and historical treasure and brings it to exuberant life. Featuring authentic recipes, anecdotes, and photographs, these pages evoke a bygone era. Mark Kurlansky brilliantly documents the remarkable stories and fills in the historical spaces with his own context and commentary, serving as a guide to this hearty and poignant look at the country’s culinary roots. This installment from The Food of a Younger Land features Coca-Cola Parties in Georgia, Arkansas Possum Clubs, Mississippi Chitlins, Maryland Crabs, and the Mint Julep Controversy. Here the WPA writers find Americans in their Southern niche, eating an enormous diversity of meals. more...

Price: $6.00

A comprehensive and engaging investigation, Spicing Up Britain serves up delicious new facets of food in Britain today. more...

Price: $40.00

The smell of sweet cinnamon on your morning oatmeal, the gentle heat of gingerbread, the sharp piquant bite from your everyday peppermill. The tales these spices could tell: of lavish Renaissance banquets perfumed with cloves, and flimsy sailing ships sent around the world to secure a scented prize; of cinnamon-dusted custard tarts and nutmeg-induced genocide; of pungent elixirs and the quest for the pepper groves of paradise. more...

Price: $16.00

Even the French admit that Jancis Robinson is the "undisputed mistress of the kingdom of wine" (Le Figaro). Internationally renowned for her work in both television and print, she is the editor of the bestselling Oxford Companion to Wine and has won more than two dozen major awards around the world. Tasting Pleasure is her compelling account of a passion that began while studying at Oxford University.<P>Writing with Julia Child's authority, Elizabeth David's intelligence, and M more...

Price: $18.00