Ways of Eating

Benjamin A. Wurgaft is a writer and historian. His previous books include Meat Planet: Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food and Thinking in Public: Strauss, Levinas, Arendt.  Merry I. White is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University. Her previous books include Coffee Life in Japan and Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval. The Japanese government has honored her work in the anthropology of Japan with the Order of the Rising Sun.

• ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction VIGNETTE 1 Duccio’s Eden CHAPTER 1 Nature and Culture in the Origins Of Agriculture VIGNETTE 2 Akashiyaki at Nishi-Akashi CHAPTER 2 Staple Empires of the Ancient World VIGNETTE 3 Coffee and Pepper CHAPTER 3 Medieval Tastes VIGNETTE 4 Before Kimchi CHAPTER 4 The Columbian Exchange, or, the World Remade VIGNETTE 5 The Spirit Safe CHAPTER 5 Social Beverages and Modernity VIGNETTE 6 Authenticity in Panama CHAPTER 6 Colony and Curry VIGNETTE 7 The Icebox CHAPTER 7 Food’s Industrial Revolution VIGNETTE 8 Bricolage CHAPTER 8 Twentieth-Century Foodways, or, Big Food and Its Discontents VIGNETTE 9 Nem on the Menu CHAPTER 9 Ways of Eating Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

"In a study that arcs gracefully from our changing understanding of the Neolithic Revolution to the era of genetically modified organisms, fast food, Slow Food, and environmental depletion, the focus is forward-facing."