Full Description
With the proliferation of food history courses and avid interest among scholars and the general public, the need for a solid comprehensive collection of key primary texts about food of the past is urgent.
This collection spans the globe from classical antiquity to the present, offering substantive selections from cookbooks, fiction, gastronomic and dietary treatises and a wide range of food writing. Offering a solid introduction to each period with extensive commentary and suggestions for interpretive strategies, this reader provides extracts undigested, for the student who needs immediate and direct contact with the ideas of the past.
Readings illustrate the various ways religion, politics, social structure, health and agricultural policy shaped what people ate in the past and offer instructive ways to think about our own food systems and how they have been shaped by historical forces.
Contents
Editor's Note
General Introduction
Part One: Sumer and Egypt
Part Two: Ancient Greece
Part Three: Ancient Rome
Part Four: Imperial China
Part Five: Ancient India
Part Six: Ancient Hebrews
Part Seven: Early Middle Ages
Part Eight: Medieval Islam
Part Nine: Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Part Ten: The Americas
Part Eleven: Era of Nation-States 1500-1650
Part Twelve: The Mercantile Era 1650-1800
Part Thirteen: Nineteenth-Century Industrial Era 1800-1900
Part Fourteen: The Twentieth Century 1900-2000
Glossary
Web Resources
Bibliography
Surveys of Food History
Appendix of Sources
Index
