Food in America

Demet Guzey offers a fun and interesting read on the social and cultural history, developments and challenges in food on trails and in the wild. She explores personal accounts, news articles and anecdotes to highlight how food has accompanied us in mountaineering, desert travel, and pilgrimage, in the army or on the street. From tinned foods to foraging in the wild, worm-infested hardtack to palate-dulling army rations, loss of appetite in high altitude to starvation at the trenches, no stone is left unturned in this tour of how we manage food on foot, and how disasters happen when we do not manage it so well. Readers will delight in both the stories of many of the famous explorations and the more current journeys.

In the history of cooking, there has been no more challenging environment than those craft in which humans took to the skies. The tale begins with meals aboard balloons and zeppelins, where cooking was accomplished below explosive bags of hydrogen, ending with space station dinners that were cooked thousands of miles below. This book is the first to chart that history worldwide, exploring the intricacies of inflight dining from 1783 to the present day, aboard balloons, zeppelins, land-based aircraft and flying boats, jets, and spacecraft.

The founders of the first railroad companies cared more about hauling freight than feeding passengers. Seeing the business possibilities in offering long-distance passengers comforts such as beds, toilets, and meals, George Pullman and other pioneering railroaders transformed rail dining. After World War II, as airline travel and automobiles became the preferred modes of travel, elegance gave way to economy. Looking at the foods, the service, the rail station restaurants, the menus, dining accommodations and more, Jeri Quinzio brings to life the history of cuisine and dining in railroad cars from the early days through today.

The Gilded Age is renowned for a variety of reasons, including its culture of conspicuous consumption among the newly rich. In the domain of food, conspicuous consumption manifested itself in appetites for expensive dishes and lavish dinner parties. These received ample publicity at the time, resulting later on in well-developed historical depictions of upper-class eating habits. This book delves into the eating habits of people of lesser means. Concerning the African American community, the working class, the impoverished, immigrants, and others our historical representations have been relatively superficial.

Food at Sea: Shipboard Cuisine from Ancient to Modern Times traces the preservation, preparation, and consumption of food at sea, over a period of several thousand years, and in a variety of cultures. The book traces the development of cooking aboard in ancient and medieval times, through the development of seafaring traditions of storing and preparing food on the world's seas and oceans.

With audiences more interested in food than ever before, and new research in food studies bringing interdisciplinary approaches to this complicated but compelling subject, museums and historic sites have an opportunity to draw new audiences and infuse new meaning into their food presentations. Interpreting Food offers a framework for understanding the big ideas in food history, suggesting best practices for linking objects, exhibits and demonstrations with the larger story of change in food production and consumption over the past two centuries—a story in which your visitors can see themselves, and explore their own relationships to food.

Prison food is often everything to prisoners. It is the only marker of time throughout the day. Food becomes commerce in the microeconomies behind prison walls. It is often the only source of pleasure in a monotonous routine. It creates sites of community when prisoners ban together to create recipes, but also becomes a site of discord when issues surrounding fairness and equity arise in the chow hall. Prison Food in America offers a high-level snapshot of the fare offered behind bars, its general guidelines and regulations, fascinating stories about prisoners and food, and the remarkable and varied ways food plays a role in the fabric of prison culture.

Acclaimed author/actress Denise Chávez explores the history, lore, and preparation of tacos—and other art forms—in a warm and exuberant memoir, with recipes. Chile country is the setting for Chávez's magical, tragicomic fiction. And in A Taco Testimony she also tells wonderful stories that connect literature with culture and food with life along the Mexican-American border.