New Books in Food
430 episodes - English - Latest episode: 20 days ago - ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsInterviews with Food Writers about their New Books
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Episodes
Susan Gravely, "Italy on a Plate: Travels, Memories, Menus" (Vietri Publishing, 2023)
March 22, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesIn her debut memoir and cookbook, Susan Gravely celebrates 40 years as Founder and Creative Director of VIETRI. In Italy on a Plate: Travels, Memories, Menus (Vietri Publishing, 2023), she shares the beginnings of VIETRI, a lifestyle brand of Italian artisan-crafted dinnerware and home and garden accessories. The company was founded in 1983 by Lee Gravely and her daughters, Susan and Frances, after a family trip to Italy where they fell in love with the colorful handpainted Italian dinnerware...
Measure for Measure Episode 5: Scoville
March 06, 2023 09:00 - 9 minutesTaste is a subjective experience. We know this because eggs pickled in human urine, cheese with live maggots living in it, fertilized and mostly-developed duck eggs, rotten shark, calf blood and cheese whiz are all delicacies somewhere. But there is a flavor that we can measure and compare objectively. Kind of. This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton and Liya Rechtman. Special thanks to our taste-testers: Brian Sexton, Daniel Siegel, Grace Gouddis, Gregory Fredle, Lois Rosson, Maiya Zwe...
Measure for Measure Episode 2: Olives
March 03, 2023 09:00 - 19 minutesJews are ritually obligated to eat matzah during Passover. But how much matzah? Well, that depends on your views on the size of an olive. This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton and Liya Rechtman. Special thanks to Rabbi Natan Slifkin, founder of RationalistJudaism.com for his work on olives and biblical measurements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
Susan Weingarten, "Haroset: A Taste of Jewish History" (Toby Press, 2019)
February 26, 2023 09:00 - 49 minutesWhile every cultures cuisine tells a story, there are few foods that carry as much history and meaning as do those on the Passover Seder plate. Haroset: A Taste of Jewish History (Toby Press, 2019) is the first book ever written about this traditional Passover seder food. In a captivating historical journey, food historian Dr Susan Weingarten traces the development of this ancient dish through a tapestry of social, religious and cultural contexts. Matthew Miller is a graduate of Yeshivat Yeso...
Gesine Bullock-Prado, "My Vermont Table: Recipes for All (Six) Seasons" (Countryman Press, 2023)
February 25, 2023 09:00 - 44 minutesVermont—arguably the OG farm-to-table state—is celebrated through 100+ recipes and stories from celebrated pastry chef Gesine Bullock-Prado. When Gesine Bullock-Prado left her Hollywood life in 2004 and moved to Vermont, she fell in love with the Green Mountain State’s flavors and six unique seasons. Spring, summer, fall, and winter all claim their place at this table, but a true Vermonter holds extra space for maple-forward mud season—that time of year before spring when thawing ice makes wa...
Azzan Yadin-Israel, "Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
February 20, 2023 09:00 - 52 minutesTemptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple (University of Chicago Press, 2023) by Dr. Azzan Yadin-Israel presents a journey into the mystery behind why the forbidden fruit became an apple, upending an explanation that stood for centuries. Dr. Yadin-Israel reveals that Eden’s fruit, once thought to be a fig or a grape, first appears as an apple in twelfth-century French art. He then traces this image back to its source in medieval storytelling. Though scholars...
Anna Zeide, "US History in 15 Foods" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
February 20, 2023 09:00 - 39 minutesFrom whiskey in the American Revolution to Spam in WWII, food reveals a great deal about the society in which it exists. Selecting 15 foods that represent key moments in the history of the United States, this book takes readers from before European colonization to the present, narrating major turning points along the way, with food as a guide. US History in 15 Foods (Bloomsbury, 2023) takes everyday items like wheat bread, peanuts, and chicken nuggets, and shows the part they played in the m...
Lisa Haushofer, "Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition" (U California Press, 2022)
February 14, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourFrom Gail Borden’s meat biscuit to John Harvey Kellogg’s peptogenic foods for race betterment and Fleishmann’s yeast as both technology of empire and imperfect tool of the global struggle with malnutrition, Lisa Haushofer’s Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition (University of California Press, 2022) brings together case studies of American and British foods developed and marketed in the century 1840-1940 as modern, scientific miracles of nutritional efficiency―of “doing more.” ...
John Goodlad, "The Salt Roads: How Fish Made a Culture" (Birlinn, 2022)
February 10, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe Salt Roads: How Fish Made a Culture (Birlinn, 2022) by John Goodlad is the extraordinary story of how salt fish from Shetland became one of the staple foods of Europe, powered an economic boom and inspired artists, writers and musicians. It ranges from the wild waters of the North Atlantic, the ice-filled fjords of Greenland and the remote islands of Faroe to the dining tables of London’s middle classes, the bacalao restaurants of Spain and the Jewish shtetls of Eastern Europe. As well as...
Jessica Barnes, "Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt" (Duke UP, 2022)
February 10, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutesEgyptians often say that bread is life; most eat this staple multiple times a day, many relying on the cheap bread subsidized by the government. In Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt (Duke UP, 2022), Jessica Barnes explores the process of sourcing domestic and foreign wheat for the production of bread and its consumption across urban and rural settings. She traces the anxiety that pervades Egyptian society surrounding the possibility that the nation could run out of wheat or that peopl...
Arthur Bovino, "Buffalo Everything: A Guide to Eating in Nickel City with 50 Recipes" (Countryman Press, 2018)
February 08, 2023 09:00 - 51 minutesBuffalo isn't just a city full of great wings. There is a great hot dog tradition, from Greek- originated "Texas red hots" to year-round charcoal-grilling at Ted's that puts Manhattan's dirty water dogs to shame. This is also a city of great sandwiches. It's a place where capicola gets layered on grilled sausage, where sautéed dandelions traditionally make up the greens in a comestible called steak- in-the-grass, and chicken fingers pack into soft Costanzo's sub rolls with Provolone, tomato, ...
Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Technology in 20th Century Mali
February 06, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourLaura Ann Twagira, an associate professor of history, head of African Studies, and an affiliate with science in society program and feminist gender sexuality studies program at Wesleyan University, talks about her book, Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Embodied Engineering examines how women in rural Mali have used technology to ensure food security through the colonial period, environmental crises...
Angela Hui, "Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter" (Trapeze, 2022)
February 02, 2023 09:00 - 44 minutesFood journalist Angela Hui grew up in rural Wales, as daughter to the owners of the Lucky Star Chinese takeaway. Angela grew up behind the counter, helping take orders and serve customers, while also trying to find her place in this small Welsh town. In her new memoir, Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood behind the Counter (Trapeze, 2022), she writes about the surprisingly central role the takeaway plays in rural Britain: Name me one other room where you can blow out birthday candles, watch a ...
Corey Lee Wrenn, "Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony" (SUNY Press, 2021)
January 28, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourIrish vegan studies are poised for increasing relevance as climate change threatens the legitimacy and longevity of animal agriculture and widespread health problems related to animal product consumption disrupt long held nutritional ideologies. Already a top producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union, Ireland has committed to expanding animal agriculture despite impending crisis. The nexus of climate change, public health, and animal welfare present a challenge to the hegemon...
Silvia Nacamulli, "Jewish Flavours of Italy: A Family Cookbook" (Green Bean Books, 2022)
January 25, 2023 09:00 - 57 minutesJewish Flavours of Italy: A Family Cookbook (Green Bean Books, 2022) is a culinary journey through Italy and a deep dive into family culinary heritage. With more than 100 kosher recipes, Silvia offers readers a unique collection of authentic and traditional Italian-Jewish dishes, combined with stunning photography, practical tips, and clear explanations. With a delicious mix of recipes, family stories and history, Silvia offers a unique insight into centuries' old culinary traditions. Discove...
Helen Anne Curry, "Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction" (U California Press, 2022)
January 21, 2023 09:00 - 49 minutesIn Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction (U California Press, 2022), historian Helen Anne Curry investigates more than a hundred years of agriculture and conservation practices to understand the tasks that farmers and researchers have considered essential to maintaining crop diversity. Through the contours of efforts to preserve diversity in one of the world's most important crops, Curry reveals how those who sought to protect native, traditional, and heritage ...
Surviving the State: Struggles for Land and Democracy in Myanmar
January 20, 2023 04:00 - 18 minutesHow do farmers struggle for land and democracy in Myanmar’s hybrid political system? How might a feminist approach to this question look like and enable novel findings? In which ways can researchers make the most of ethnographic methods to understand ordinary people’s survival strategies? And do experiences from rural Myanmar reflect the wider changing landscape of development in the Global South? In this episode, Dr. Hilary Faxon, a Marie Curie Fellow in the Department of Food and Resource E...
Dalal Abo El Seoud, "Fish, Milk, Tamarind: A Book of Egyptian Arabic Food Expressions" (American U in Cairo Press, 2022)
January 18, 2023 09:00 - 31 minutesIn Fish, Milk, Tamarind: A Book of Egyptian Arabic Food Expressions (American University in Cairo Press, 2022), Dalal Abo El Seoud presents 100 commonly used Egyptian food expressions. Can you guess what Egyptians mean when they say that something is "a peeled banana" or that someone is "sleeping in honey" or has "turned the sea to tahini"? You may find the answers quite unexpected when you open the pages of this delightful giftbook featuring some one hundred popular food-inflected phrases an...
Consumed: The Myth and Reality of Cannibalism
January 14, 2023 09:00 - 24 minutesCannibalism has been used for centuries to define the lowest form of humanity, but the story isn't as straightforward as it may seem. Turns out, there may be a logic - or even a love - to eating people. Guests Emily Anderson, Curator of “Cannibalism: Myth & Reality” Bill Schutt, Author of Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
Forbidden Fruit: Religious Fervor about Food
January 12, 2023 09:00 - 29 minutesContemporary diet culture is only the latest manifestation of a long history of religious fervor about food. Guests Isabel Foxen Duke, health coach Alan Levinovitz, Professor of Religious Studies at James Madison University Corrie Norman, Associate Director, Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
David Z. Moster, "Etrog: How A Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol" (Palgrave Pivot, 2018)
January 11, 2023 09:00 - 43 minutesEvery year before the holiday of Sukkot, Jews all around the world purchase an etrog―a lemon-like fruit―to participate in the holiday ritual. In Etrog: How A Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol (Palgrave Pivot, 2018), David Z. Moster tracks the etrog from its evolutionary home in Yunnan, China, to the lands of India, Iran, and finally Israel, where it became integral to the Jewish celebration of Sukkot. Matthew Miller is a graduate of Yeshivat Yesodei HaTorah. He studied Jewish Studies and L...
Gil Hovav, "Candies from Heaven" (Green Bean Books, 2023)
January 08, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour"Uncle Aron's compliments, which hadn't changed since the days of the Bible, didn't sound so great. One time, he told my mother that she was 'awesome like an army with flags.' Another time, he informed her that 'your nose is like the tower of Lebanon." Meet the village it took to raise Gil Hovav - colorful aunts and uncles hailing from one of the most respected lineages in the Jewish world (Hovav is the great-grandson of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the reviver of the Hebrew language). This book inclu...
Hélène Jawhara Piñer, "Jews, Food, and Spain: The Oldest Medieval Spanish Cookbook and the Sephardic Culinary Heritage" (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
December 27, 2022 09:00 - 58 minutesIn Jews, Food, and Spain: The Oldest Medieval Spanish Cookbook and the Sephardic Culinary Heritage (Academic Studies Press, 2022), Hélène Jawhara Piñer presents readers with the dishes, ingredients, techniques, and aesthetic principles that make up a sophisticated and attractive cuisine, one that has had a mostly unremarked influence on modern Spanish and Portuguese recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://n...
Garritt van Dyk, "Commerce, Food, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England and France" (Amsterdam UP, 2022)
December 26, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourGarritt van Dyk talks about national identity, food, and cooking in this conversation about Commerce, Food, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England and France: Across the Channel (Amsterdam University Press, 2022) "Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you who you are" was the challenge issued by French gastronomist Jean Brillat-Savarin. Champagne is declared a unique emblem of French sophistication and luxury, linked to the myth of its invention by Dom Pérignon. Across the Channel, a cup o...
Naa Oyo A. Kwate, "White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
December 25, 2022 09:00 - 44 minutesThe long and pernicious relationship between fast food restaurants and the African American community. Today, fast food is disproportionately located in Black neighborhoods and marketed to Black Americans through targeted advertising. But throughout much of the twentieth century, fast food was developed specifically for White urban and suburban customers, purposefully avoiding Black spaces. In White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation (U Minnesota Press, 2023)...
Annuska Derks et al. "Fragrant Frontier: Global Spice Entanglements from the Sino-Vietnamese Uplands" (NIAS Press, 2022)
December 23, 2022 09:00 - 25 minutesWhere do the spices we find in our kitchen cabinets come from? What can we learn from tracing spices and their commodities and how does their trade impact the livelihoods of ethnic minority farmers in the Sino-Vietnamese uplands? Annuska Derks and Jean-Francois Rousseau, co- editors with Sarah Turner of the book Fragrant Frontier Global Spice Entanglements in the Sino Vietnamese Uplands, joined Julia Heinle discussing their recently published NIAS Press edited volume. Fragrant Frontier demyst...
The ‘Domino Effect’: Global and Regional Climate Change Impacts on Food Supply Chains
December 22, 2022 09:00 - 22 minutesThere is a complex relationship between climate change and food systems. Food supply chains – in particular food transportation – result in global greenhouse gas emissions, and these emissions are known to be a driving force underlying climate change. But it also works the other way. Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, Dr Arunima Malik discusses the wide-ranging impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on global regional food systems and supply chains, identifying potentia...
Ben Pitcher, "Back to the Stone Age: Race and Prehistory in Contemporary Culture" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
December 18, 2022 09:00 - 49 minutesWhat does Prehistory mean to us now? In Back to the Stone Age: Race and Prehistory in Contemporary Culture (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022), Ben Pitcher, a Reader in Sociology at the University of Westminster, uses cultural studies to explore both the human past and our contemporary life. The book examines how ideas of the prehistoric speak to contemporary anxieties, political projects, and even diets and food choices. Moreover, many of these versions of the past are the basis for regressive politic...
Michael Weeks, "Cattle Beet Capital: Making Industrial Agriculture in Northern Colorado" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
December 17, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourIn 1870 several hundred settlers arrived at a patch of land at the confluence of the South Platte and Cache la Poudre Rivers in Colorado Territory. Their planned agricultural community, which they named Greeley, was centered around small landholdings, shared irrigation, and a variety of market crops. One hundred years later, Greeley was the home of the world’s largest concentrated cattle-feeding operation, with the resources of an entire region directed toward manufacturing beef. How did that...
Rebecca Ingram, "Women's Work: How Culinary Cultures Shaped Modern Spain" (Vanderbilt UP, 2022)
December 16, 2022 09:00 - 56 minutesSandie Holguín (Professor of History and Coeditor of the Journal of Women’s History, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Rebecca Ingram (Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages, Cultures, and Literatures, University of San Diego) about her book, Women’s Work: How Culinary Cultures Shaped Modern Spain (Vanderbilt University Press, 2022). Today Spain is widely known for its culinary achievements, drawing tourists from around the world to sample delights from Michelin-starr...
Max Haiven, "Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire" (Pluto Press, 2022)
December 08, 2022 09:00 - 54 minutesPalm oil is a commodity like no other. Found in half of supermarket products, from food to cosmetics to plastics, it has shaped the world in which we live. In Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (Pluto Press, 2022), Max Haiven tells a sweeping story that touches on everything from empire to art, from war to food, and from climate change to racial capitalism. By tracing the global history of this ubiquitous elixir we see how capitalism creates surplus populations: people made dependent on capitalis...
Melanie Joy, "The Vegan Matrix: Understanding and Discussing Privilege Among Vegans to Build a More Inclusive and Empowered Movement" (Lantern, 2020)
December 02, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourA short guidebook to understanding and discussing privilege among vegans and vegan organizations in the wake of #metoo, including how to establish accountability while honoring dignity and ways to communicate effectively. In The Vegan Matrix: Understanding and Discussing Privilege Among Vegans to Build a More Inclusive and Empowered Movement (Lantern Publishing & Media, 2020), psychologist, longtime vegan advocate, and organizational head Dr. Melanie Joy explores a serious problem in the vega...
Olena Braichenko et al., "Ukraine: Food and History" (O. Braichenko, 2020)
November 30, 2022 09:00 - 41 minutesUkraine: Food and History (O. Braichenko, 2020) tells about the past and present of Ukrainian cuisine. It includes recipes of dishes that everyone can cook and local products, which together present Ukraine’s cultural diversity and rich heritage. Learn from the book about the culinary traditions of Ukraine which are still alive nowadays, as well cooking techniques, and ways of product preservation. The authors pay special attention to the way Ukrainian cuisine is presented whether during a di...
Darra Goldstein, "The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food" (U California Press, 2022)
November 28, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourThe Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food (U California Press, 2022) unearths the foods and flavors of the Russian land. Preeminent food studies scholar Darra Goldstein offers readers a concise, engaging, and gorgeously crafted story of Russian cuisine and culture. This story demonstrates how national identity is revealed through food—and how people know who they are by what they eat together. The Kingdom of Rye examines the Russians' ingenuity in overcoming hunger, a difficult clim...
Psyche A. Williams-Forson, "Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America" (UNC Press, 2022)
November 21, 2022 09:00 - 32 minutesIn Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America (UNC Press, 2022), Psyche A. Williams-Forson offers her knowledge and experience to illuminate how anti-Black racism operates in the practice and culture of eating. She shows how mass media, nutrition science, economics, and public policy drive entrenched opinions among both Black and non-Black Americans about what is healthful and right to eat. Distorted views of how and what Black people eat are pervasive, bolstering the belief that th...
Erin Alice Cowling, "Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
November 21, 2022 09:00 - 45 minutesIn terms of its popularity, as well as its production, chocolate was among the first foods to travel from the New World to Spain. Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature (U Toronto Press, 2021) considers chocolate as an object of collective memory used to bridge the transatlantic gap through Spanish literary works of the early modern period, tracing the mention of chocolate from indigenous legends and early chronicles of the conquistadors to the theatre and literatur...
Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish, "Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
November 10, 2022 09:00 - 50 minutesImage by image and hashtag by hashtag, Instagram has redefined the ways we relate to food. Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish’s edited book Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation (published by the University of Illinois Press in 2022) explore the massively popular social media platform as a space for self-identification, influence, transformation, and resistance. Artists and journalists join a wide range of scholars to look at food’s connection to Instagram from vantage points a...
Christopher Howard, "Who Cares: The Social Safety Net in America" (Oxford UP, 2022)
November 08, 2022 09:00 - 35 minutesSocieties are often judged by how they treat their most vulnerable members: the poor and near poor. In the United States, this responsibility belongs not only to governments, but also to charities, businesses, individuals, and family members. Their combined efforts generate a social safety net. In Who Cares: The Social Safety Net in America (Oxford UP, 2022), Christopher Howard offers the first comprehensive map of the US social safety net. He chronicles how different parts of American socie...
Gurpinder Singh Lalli, "Schools, Space and Culinary Capital" (Routledge, 2022)
November 03, 2022 08:00 - 27 minutesGurpinder Singh Lalli's book Schools, Space and Culinary Capital (Routledge, 2022) introduces the notion of culinary capital to investigate socialisation and school mealtime experiences in an academy school based in the UK. Drawing on interviews collated from children, teachers and staff within the school, the text sheds light on food insecurity in society and schools as being a major issue in educational policy. The book examines schools as a microcosm for society with school food space bein...
Will Guidara, "Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect" (Optimism Press, 2022)
November 02, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourToday I talked to Will Guidara, author of Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect (Optimism Press, 2022). Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world. How did Guidara pull off this unprecedented transformation? Radical reinvention, a true partnership between the kitchen...
Sustainable Agriculture in the Global South: A Religious Response to the Global Food Crisis
October 25, 2022 08:00 - 46 minutesMicha Odenheimer is the founder and director of Tevel B’Zedek, an Israeli NGO that aims to create Israeli and Jewish leadership passionately engaged in Tikkun Olam – fixing the world – locally and globally. Tevel B’Zedek provides community development support for sustainable agriculture in remote rural areas. Odenheimer is an activist and former journalist who reported from worldwide locations including Somalia, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India. Born in California and educated at Yale,...
John Briscoe, "Crush: The Triumph of California Wine" (U Nevada Press, 2018)
October 19, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn 1910, the future of California wine looked dim. Beset by crises ranging from earthquakes to insect infestations, and with momentum moving toward prohibition, the nascent industry seemed dead on the vine. How then, a mere sixty years later, did a blind taste test from some of France's toughest sommeliers judge California wines superior to their French counterparts? In Crush: The Triumph of California Wine (University of Nevada Press, 2018), writer, lawyer, and University of California Berke...
Alan Warde et al., "The Social Significance of Dining Out: A Study of Continuity and Change" (Manchester UP, 2020)
October 12, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourDining out used to be considered exceptional. However, the Food Standards Authority reported that in 2014, one meal in six was eaten away from home in Britain. Previously considered a necessary substitute for an inability to obtain a meal in a family home, dining out has become a popular recreational activity for a majority of the population, offering pleasure as well as refreshment. The Social Significance of Dining Out: A Study of Continuity and Change (Manchester UP, 2020) draws on a major...
Warren Klein et al., "Be Fruitful! The Etrog in Jewish Art, Culture, and History" (Mineged, 2022)
October 07, 2022 08:00 - 54 minutesThe etrog is a curious fruit. The Bible commands its readers: “And you shall take for yourselves on the first day beautiful tree-fruit (peri etz hadar), palm fronds, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.” Native to the Far East and adapted to the culture of the eastern Mediterranean, the rituals of the etrog are among the very few that are dependent upon a particular environment for growth. In their wanderings across the gl...
Emelia Quinn, "Reading Veganism: The Monstrous Vegan, 1818 to Present" (Oxford UP, 2021)
October 06, 2022 08:00 - 46 minutesReading Veganism: The Monstrous Vegan, 1818 to Present (Oxford UP, 2021) focuses on the iteration of the trope of ‘the monstrous vegan’ across 200 years of Anglophone literature. Explicating, through such monsters, veganism’s relation to utopian longing and challenge to the conceptual category of the ‘human’, the book explores ways in which ethical identities can be written, represented, and transmitted. Reading Veganism proposes that we can recognize and identify the monstrous vegan in relat...
Angela Tedesco, "Finding Turtle Farm: My Twenty-Acre Adventure in Community-Supported Agriculture" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
October 03, 2022 08:00 - 25 minutesThis is the tale of one woman's journey of growing a community-supported farm from earth to plate. In 1995 Angela Tedesco bought a twenty-acre farm with the goal of growing food for her community, and for seventeen years she fed up to 180 families. Finding Turtle Farm: My Twenty-Acre Adventure in Community-Supported Agriculture (U Minnesota Press, 2022) is the story behind that incredible work, chronicling all the ups and downs of navigating grass-roots organic agriculture in its nascent era....
Beyond Meat? Dietary Shifts and Meat Contestations in China, India and Vietnam
September 30, 2022 08:00 - 31 minutesWhat explains the uneven meatification of diets in three of Asia’s core ‘emerging economies’? How and why is meat consumption changing today, and what role have American fast-food chains played? To discuss these questions and more, Helene Ramnæs, coordinator for the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies, is joined by Marius Korsnes, Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Arve Hansen. Asian diets include considerably more meat now than in the recent past, but meat is a contested issue. China and Vietnam have ex...
Stephen Le, "100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today" (Picador, 2016)
September 29, 2022 16:55 - 1 hourThere are few areas of modern life that are burdened by as much information and advice, often contradictory, as our diet and health: eat a lot of meat, eat no meat; whole-grains are healthy, whole-grains are a disaster; eat everything in moderation; eat only certain foods--and on and on. In 100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today (Picador, 2016), biological anthropologist Stephen Le explains how cuisines of different cultures are a result of centuries of evo...
Hannah Kirshner, "Water, Wood, and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town" (Penguin, 2022)
September 22, 2022 08:00 - 35 minutesA young sake bar owner, Yusuke Shimoki, arrives on the doorstep of Hannah Kirshner’s Brooklyn apartment “with a suitcase full of Ishikawa sake,” in Hannah’s words. That visit sparked a years-long connection between Hannah and the rural Japanese community of Yamanaka, a home for artisans and artists, hunters and farmers, and other ordinary Japanese trying to live in the countryside. Those visits are the subject of Hannah’s book, Water Wood and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a J...
Kenneth H. Kolb, "Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate" (U California Press, 2021)
September 20, 2022 08:00 - 38 minutesRetail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate (U California Press, 2021) examines the failure of recent efforts to improve Americans' diets by increasing access to healthy food. Based on exhaustive research, this book by Kenneth H. Kolb documents the struggles of two Black neighborhoods in Greenville, South Carolina. For decades, outsiders ignored residents' complaints about the unsavory retail options on their side of town—until the well-intentioned but flawed "food desert" concept too...