Guides students through a rich menu of American history through food
and eating
This book features a wide and diverse range of primary sources covering
the cultivation, preparation, marketing, and consumption of food from
the time before Europeans arrived in North America to the present-day
United States. It is organized around what the authors label the "Four
P's"--production, politics, price, and preference--in order to show
readers that food represents something more than nutrition and the daily
meals that keep us alive. The documents in this book demonstrate that
food we eat is a "highly condensed social fact" that both reflects and
is shaped by politics, economics, culture, religion, region, race,
class, and gender.
Food and Eating in America covers more than 500 years of American food
and eating history with sections on: An Appetizer: What Food and Eating
Tell Us About America; Hunting, Harvesting, Starving, and the Occasional
Feast: Food in Early America; Fields and Foods in the Nineteenth
Century; Feeding a Modern World: Revolutions in Farming, Food, and
Famine; and Counterculture Cuisines and Culinary Tourism.
- Presents primary sources from a wide variety of perspectives--Native
Americans, explorers, public officials, generals, soldiers, slaves,
slaveholders, clergy, businessmen, workers, immigrants, activists,
African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, artists, writers,
investigative reporters, judges, the owners of food trucks, and prison
inmates
- Illustrates the importance of eating and food through speeches,
letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles,
illustrations, photographs, song lyrics, advertisements, legislative
statutes, court rulings, interviews, manifestoes, government reports,
and recipes
- Offers a new way of exploring how people lived in the past by looking
closely and imaginatively at food
Food and Eating in America: A Documentary Reader is an ideal book for
students of United States history, food, and the social sciences. It
will also appeal to foodies and those with a curiosity for
documentary-style books of all kinds.
