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University of California Press

The Gastronomica Reader

by Darra Goldstein (Editor)
Hardcover eBook
Price: $42.95 / £36.00
Publication Date: Feb 2010
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 376
ISBN: 9780520945753
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About the Book

Described in the 2008 Saveur 100 as “At the top of our bedside reading pile since its inception in 2001,” the award-winning Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture is a quarterly feast of truly exceptional writing on food. Designed both to entertain and to provoke, The Gastronomica Reader now offers a sumptuous sampling from the journal’s pages—including essays, poetry, interviews, memoirs, and an outstanding selection of the artwork that has made Gastronomica so distinctive. In words and images, it takes us around the globe, through time, and into a dazzling array of cultures, investigating topics from early hominid cooking to Third Reich caterers to the Shiite clergy under Ayatollah Khomeini who deemed Iranian caviar fit for consumption under Islamic law. Informed throughout by a keen sense of the pleasures of eating, tasting, and sharing food, The Gastronomica Reader will inspire readers to think seriously, widely, and deeply about what goes onto their plates.

Gastronomica is a winner of the Utne Reader's Independent Press Award for Social/Cultural Coverage

About the Author

Darra Goldstein is Editor-in-Chief of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture and Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Russian at Williams College. She is the author of The Georgian Feast: The Vibrant Culture and Savory Food of the Republic of Georgia (UC Press; winner of the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ 1994 Julia Child Cookbook of the Year Award), among other books.

Table of Contents


Contents
Editor’s Introduction 

appetites
Women Who Eat Dirt | Susan Allport 
Badlands: Portrait of a Competitive Eater | John O’Connor
“Don’t Eat That”: The Erotics of Abstinence in American Christianity | R. Marie Griffith 
A Shallot | Richard Wilbur

the family table
Delicacy | Paul Russell 
The Unbearable Lightness of Wartime Cuisine | A. Marin 
One Year and a Day: A Recipe for Gumbo and Mourning | James Nolan 
The Prize Inside | Toni Mirosevich 
Messages in a Bottle | Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 
dinner, 1933 | Charles Bukowski 

social constructs
Otto Horcher, Caterer to the Third Reich | Giles MacDonogh 
The Cooking Ape: An Interview with Richard Wrangham | Elisabeth Townsend 
How Caviar Turned Out to Be Halal | H. E. Chehabi 
“La grande bouffe”: Cooking Shows as Pornography | Andrew Chan 
Recipe for S&M Marmalade | Judith Pacht 

the art of food
Man Ray’s Electricité | Stefanie Spray Jandl 
Food + Clothing = | Robert Kushner 
Vik Muniz’s Ten Ten’s Weed Necklace | Vanessa Silberman 
Zhan Wang: Urban Landscape | John Stomberg 
The First Still Life | Lawrence Raab 

personal journeys
Waiting for a Cappuccino: A Brief Layover along the Spice Trail | Carolyn Thériault 
Include Me Out | Fred Chappell 
Evacuation Day, or A Foodie Is Bummed Out | Merry White 
Ripe Peach | Louise Glu¨ck 

how others eat
My McDonald’s | Constantin Boym 
Great Apes as Food | Dale Peterson 
The Bengali Bonti | Chitrita Banerji 
The Best “Chink” Food: Dog Eating and the Dilemma of Diversity | Frank H. Wu 

close to the earth
Organic in Mexico: A Conversation with Diana Kennedy | L. Peat O’Neil 
Mr. Clarence Jones, Carolina Rice Farmer | Jennie Ashlock 
“GM or Death”: Food and Choice in Zambia | Christopher M. Annear 
Wine, Place, and Identity in a Changing Climate | Robert Pincus 
Episode with a Potato | Eric Ormsby 

technologies
A Plea for Culinary Modernism: Why We Should Love New, Fast, Processed Food | Rachel Laudan 
The Patented Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich: Food as Intellectual Property | Anna M. Shih 
The Clockwork Roasting Jack, or How Technology Entered the Kitchen | Jeanne Schinto 
Grinding Away the Rust: The Legacy of Iceland’s Herring Oil and Meal Factories | Chris Bogan 

pleasures of the past
A la recherche de la tomate perdue: The First French Tomato Recipe? | Barbara Santich 
The Egg Cream Racket | Andrew Coe 
Frightening the Game | Charles Perry 
Alkermes: “A Liqueur of Prodigious Strength” | Amy Butler Greenfield 
Food for Thought | Eamon Grennan 

Acknowledgments 
Contributors 
Illustration Credits 
 

Reviews

“A volume to browse and absorb.”
— New York Times
“This volume should absorb anyone with an appetite for unconventional food writing.” STARRED REVIEW
— Publishers Weekly
“To say that the subject matter in this book is varied would be an understatement, but the one thing that does not waver, is this publication’s commitment to using erudite writers who consistently present rich, compelling work. As a result, it is easy to get quickly drawn in and once you do, it is difficult to put this book down.”
— San Francisco Book Review
“Delights in manners ranging from the poetic to the political.”
— Bookforum
“The gloriously illustrated Gastronomica reader is a every bit as good as it looks.”
— Times Literary Supplement (TLS)
“Rarefied but unpretentious, each issue is an artfully curated collection of essays, poems, art, and journalistic reportage. . . . Gastronomica's fare never fails to nourish us.” —Saveur magazine

“I am so impressed with this journal. It indicates an accuracy and diversity of information and style that will inspire and encourage people to pay attention to what they are eating.”—Alice Waters

“Food, even more than sex, is the basis for human relationships, and if Brillat-Savarin's 'Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are' is right, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture will enhance your life and improve your relationships with your family and your friends.”—Jacques Pépin

“Gastronomica deserves the food world's attention.” —Paul Levy

“A food journal of high standards that takes on substantive food issues.”—Patricia Unterman

“Interacting with so many disciplines, Gastronomica will assure a fine intellectual menu and reinvigorate the worlds of food and culture with ever higher standards of scholarship.”—Anne Willan

“[One of] my top food favorites from 2008. . . . A delightful study of all things food, even those that touch the world of food in a peripheral way.”—The Zest, food blog

Awards

  • Best Food Literature Book from the United States 2010, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards
  • IACP Lifetime Achievement Award 2020 2020, International Association of Culinary Professionals

Media

Interview with the author.