The North American Free Trade Agreement—or NAFTA, as we Americans call it—is very much in the news of late, primarily because President Trump has decided to make good…
In Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are (William Morrow Books, 2017), food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director Sophie Egan takes readers on…
A heritage food in France, and a high-priced obscurity in the United States. But in both countries, foie gras, the specially fattened liver of a duck or goose,…
Food was central to the lives of people in England during the Middles Ages in ways different than it is today. As Christopher Woolgar reveals in his book…
Anna L. Tsing‘s new book is on my new (as of this post) list of Must-Read-Books-That-All-Humans-Who-Can-Read-Should-Read-And-That-Nonhumans-Should-Find-A-Way-To-Somehow-Engage-Even-If-Reading-Is… Visit New Books in Anthropology for the podcast. There is something wrong…
The Hebrews called it “Eden.” The Greeks and Romans called it the “Golden Age.” The philosophes–or Rousseau at least–called it the “State of Nature.” Marx and Engels called…
The other day I found myself in a cooking situation that’s fairly common: I had a few odd ingredients–some oxidized strips of bacon, a withered red pepper, a…
Did Proust have it right? Does food, whether it’s a madeleine from an aristocratic childhood or the Velveeta mac-and-cheese my mom used to make, have a special significance…
Merry (Corky) White‘s new book Coffee Life in Japan (University of California Press, 2012) opens with a memory of stripping naked and being painted blue in an underground…