History | Culture

Allen, Stewart Lee. In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food. New York: Ballantine Books, 2002.

Dalby, Andrew. Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. N.Y.: W.W.Norton & Co., 1999, 1997.

Fenton, Alexander, and Eszter Kisban, editors. Food in Change: Eating Habits from the Middle Ages to the Present Day. Glasgow: Bell & Bain, Ltd., 1986. 

Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food. New York: The Free Press, 2002. (Available for loan from ORIAS.)

Hobhouse, Henry. Seeds of Change: Five Plants that Transformed Mankind. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. ]

Kiple, Kenneth F., and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas, editors. The Cambridge World History of Food, 2 volumes. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Lowenberg, Miriam E., E. Neige Todhunter, Eva D. Winson, Jane R. Savage, and James L. Lubawski. Food & Man, second edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974.

Moxham, Roy. The Great Hedge of India. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc., 2001. 
The story of the British customs hedge built across India to control the Salt Tax in the 19th Century.

Simmons, Frederick J. Eat Not This Flesh: Food Avoidances from Prehistory to the Present, second edition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

Tannahill, Reay. Food in History. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1988.

Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. Anthea Bell, translator. History of Food. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1998. (Available for loan from ORIAS.)

Visser, Margaret. Much Depends on Dinner: The extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and taboos of an ordinary meal. N.Y.: Grove Press, 1986.

Ritual/Myth
Eliade, Mircea. Myth and Reality (transl. from the French by Willard R. Trask). N.Y: Harper & Row, 1963. 
Eric Crystal recommends this book if you are interested in further background on myth and ritual associated with food plants and animals. See Chapter 3: "Myths of Rites of Renewal."

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. (transl. from the French by Willard R. Trask) N.Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959.

Contemporary Issues

Bramwell, Martyn. Food Watch. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2001. A simple illustrated introduction to the future of food and farming for students (6-10) .  (Available for loan from ORIAS.)

Goodman, David, and Michael Watts, editors. Globalising Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

Mintz, Sidney W. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.

Kimbrell, Andrew (editor) Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. Island Press, July 2002. Friday's speaker Amitadha Mittal contributed to this collection of essays addressing problems associated with industrial agriculture and possible solutions through alternative farming practices. Other contributors include Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and Ron Kroese, Alice Waters and Peter Warshall. This large soft back format includes great photographs and an extensive listing of organizational resources in the back. (Available for loan from ORIAS.)

Specific Foods

Burleigh, Robert. Chocolate: Riches from the Rainforest. N.Y.: Harry Abrams, Inc., 2002. This book was produced in association with the Field Museum in Chicago. It has wonderful photographs and is suitable for middle school readers. (Available for loan from ORIAS.)

Coe, Sophie D. and Michael D. Coe. The True History of Chocolate. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996. (Available for loan from ORIAS.)

The Book of Chocolate. Preface by Jeanne Bourin. N.Y: Flammarion, 1996.(ISBN 2080135880). This is a coffee table book ($50) originally published in French with fabulous photographs of the history of chocolate.

Forshyth, Adrian. How Monkeys Make Chocolate: Foods and medicines from the rainforests. Owl Books, 1995. A book targeted to K-5 with good photographs of cacao and coffee harvesting in Costa Rica. (Available for loan from ORIAS.)

Kurlansky, Mark. Salt: A World History. New York: Walker and Company, 2002. (Available for loan from ORIAS.)

Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.

Pendergrast, Mark. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed the World. N.Y: Basic Books (Perseus Books Group), 1999.

Curriculum Units

Jane Boston and Stephen Commins. Why is there Hunger in Africa? Nature Pleads "Not Guilty" (a curriculum unit for science and social studies, grades 7-12). Stanford: Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education, 1995.

Gary Mukai, Heidi Ballard and Ann Ishimaru. Feeding A Hungry World: Focus on Rice in Asia and the Pacific. (a curriculum unit for science and social studies, grades 7-12). Stanford: Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education, 1995.

Gardner, Vika, and R.T. Steponaitis. Polishing the Mirror: A Curriculum Unit on Central and Inner Eurasia. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Michigan, 2000.
Contains a good section on food from the region.