The true adventures of David Fairchild, a late-nineteenth-century food explorer who traveled the globe and introduced diverse crops like avocados, mangoes, seedless grapes--and thousands more--to the American plate. "In the nineteenth century American meals were about subsistence, not enjoyment. Agriculture yielded stable, basic crops like soybeans, corn, and barley, and few growers considered variety or flavor. But as a new century approached, appetites...

"A narrative social history tracing the evolution of traditional Italian American cuisine from its origins in Italy and its transformation in America into a distinct new cuisine"--

"In Food on the Page, the first comprehensive history of American cookbooks, Megan J. Elias chronicles cookbook publishing from the early 1800s to the present day. Following food writing through trends such as the Southern nostalgia that emerged in the late nineteenth century, the Francophilia of the 1940s, countercultural cooking in the 1970s, and today's cult of locally sourced ingredients, she reveals that what we read about food influences us...

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