James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner

From the author of the acclaimed 97 Orchard and her husband, a culinary historian, an in-depth exploration of the greatest food crisis the nation has ever faced—the Great Depression—and how it transformed America’s culinary culture.

The decade-long Great Depression, a period of shifts in the country’s political and social landscape, forever changed the way

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In Retro Recipes from the '50s and '60s, Cutthroat Kitchen star Addie Gundry serves up nostalgic recipes from the Mad Men era, like Beef Wellington and Grasshopper Pie. Post-war rationing became a distant memory, and the rise of home entertainment culture made for prettier, more complex food. With French influence from Julia Child, and elegant aspirational figures like Jacqueline Kennedy, suburban dinner parties went glam. Backyard barbecues, fondues...

"A captivating and surprising tour of American food in all its variety, charm, and occasionally dubious lore. What can Buffalo wings, submarines and hoagies and heros, fortune cookie factories, yellow mustard, green chiles, and shrimp and grits reveal about Americans? Rachel Wharton and Kimberly Ellen Hall tell the compelling stories behind some of our most iconic foods and what they say about who we are - and who, perhaps, we are becoming"--

"In grocery store aisles and kitchens across the country, smiling images of 'Aunt Jemima' and other historical and fictional black cooks can be found on various food products and in advertising. Although these images are sanitized and romanticized in American popular culture, they represent the untold stories of enslaved men and women who had a significant impact on the nation's culinary and hospitality traditions even as they were forced to prepare...

"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...

"Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll transports readers back in time to witness the remarkable evolution of the American restaurant chef in the 1970s and '80s. Taking a rare, coast-to-coast perspective, Andrew Friedman goes inside Chez Panisse and other Bay Area restaurants to show how the politically charged backdrop of Berkeley helped draw new talent to the profession; into the historically underrated community of Los Angeles chefs, inclduing a young Wolfgang...

"The autobiography the Food Network would write if it could write one--a candid, behind-the-scenes look at how one network launched one of the biggest cultural waves of the last 20 years"-- "Big personalities, high drama--the extraordinary behind-the-scenes story of the Food Network, now about to celebrate its twentieth anniversary: the business, media, and cultural juggernaut that changed the way America thinks about food. In October 1993, a tiny...

"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"--