US History in 15 Foods

Anna Zeide is Associate Professor of History and the founding director of the Food Studies Program in the College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, USA. She has previously written Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry (2018), which won a 2019 James Beard Media Award, and co-edited Acquired Tastes: Stories about the Origins of Modern Food (2021).

• 1. Pemmican: Food in the Not-So-New World2. Corn: Colonization and Settlement, 1500-17503. Whiskey: Eating and Drinking in a New Nation, 1750-18004. Graham Bread: Early Nineteenth-Century Diet and Reform 5. Potlikker: Food and Slavery in the Antebellum South6. Peanuts: The Civil War, Reconstruction, and After7. Jell-O: Industrialization in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era8. Spaghetti: Immigration and Consumerism in the 1910s and 1920s9. Oranges: Food and Agriculture in the Great Depression 10. Spam: Eating in the Second World War11. Green Bean Casserole: Postwar Foodways12. Tofu: Food in the Counterculture and Protest Era, 1950-7513. Chicken Nuggets: Cheap Food and Politics in the 1970 and 1980s14. Big Mac: McDonaldization and Its Discontents, 1990-200815. Korean Tacos: Immigration, Social Media, and America TodayEpilogue BibliographyIndex

Zeide takes readers on a fascinating tour of American foodways, from the pre-contact era to the present. As she tells the story of fifteen iconic foods and dishes, she traces the key political, social, and economic trends that defined the nation. Food history, this book persuasively shows, is U.S. history.