Anastasia Day reviews Amy B. Trubek’s “Making Modern Meals: How Americans Cook Today,” a book that problematizes the concept of cooking at every turn.

Will Payne reviews Robert Ji-Song Ku’s “Dubious Gastronomy: The Cultural Politics of Eating Asian in the USA,” a book that illuminates the many cultural and political hazards inherent in Asian-American cuisine.

Jennifer Lacy-Nichols reviews Marion Nestle’s “Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning),” a book that explores the political strategies used by the soft drink industry.

Romina Delmonte reviews Jean Pierre Poulain’s “The Sociology of Food: Eating and the Place of Food in Society,” as translated by Augusta Dörr, which reads as a theoretical essay and an introductory guide to sociologies of food.

Jeffrey Rowe reviews Alison Hope Alkon and Julie Guthman’s edited volume “The New Food Activism: Opposition, Cooperation, and Collective Action,” which he reads as a call to action.

Erica Zurawski reviews Emma-Jayne Abbots’s “The Agency of Eating: Mediation, Food and the Body,” which unites the eater, food, and knowledge to demonstrate the entanglement of matter and meaning-making.

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.