Catherine Price reviews John T. Lang’s “What’s So Controversial about Genetically Modified Food?” She suggests that the book uses GM debates as an entry point to examine the whole of the food system.
Category Archive: Review
Jessica Carbone reviews Henry Notaker’s “A History of Cookbooks: From Kitchen to Page over Seven Centuries,” a book which she argues is a biography of the cookbook genre.
Peter Mabli reviews Camille Bégin’s “Taste of the Nation: The New Deal Search for America’s Food examines the America Eats,” which sensorially interprets America Eats, a partially completed endeavor by the New Deal’s Federal Writers Project.
James Edward Malin reviews Samantha L. Martin-McAuliffe’s edited volume of thirteen original essays, which examine the intersection of food and architecture through relationships of regionalism, sustainability, craft, and authenticity.
Cassandra Malis reviews Adrian Miller’s “The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas,” which dives into the history behind food workers in the White House, adding a historical perspective to current political conversation about African American foodways.
Claudia Prieto-Piastro reviews Sarah Bowen’s “Divided Spirits: Tequila, Mezcal, and the Politics of Production,” which combines anthropological and historical methods to reveal the politics behind the increased popularity of tequila and mezcal production in Mexico.
Hannah C. Gunderman reviews Brigette Sebastia’s edited volume, “Eating Traditional Food: Politics, Identity, and Practices,” which examines the processes that produce notions of “traditional” foods, particularly within a global foodscape.
Josiah Taylor reviews Jessica Hayes-Conroy’s “Savoring Alternative Food: School Gardens, Healthy Eating, and Visceral Difference,” which reveals how social factors like culture, class, gender, and race contribute to exclude some people from the table.
Virginia Webb reviews Richard Ocejo’s “Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy,” which examines how lower status jobs (bartender, distiller, barber, and butcher) are being upscaled by educated urbanites in a post-industrial city.
Sarah Huang reviews Nora McKeon’s “Food Security Governance: Empowering Communities, Regulating Corporations,” which provides a food system analysis to understand the history of food issues from World War II to present time, from local food systems to global commodity chains.