Garden History

In Red Sauce, Ian MacAllen traces the evolution of traditional Italian-American cuisine, often referred to as "red sauce Italian," from its origins in Italy to its transformation in America into a new, distinct cuisine. It is a fascinating social and culinary history exploring the integration of red sauce food into mainstream America alongside the blending of Italian immigrant otherness into a national American identity.

The first edition, published in 2007, won a James Beard Award. Now updated with newly discovered recipes and historical information, this updated edition includes the origins of the first American drink, the mint julep (which Wondrich places before the American Revolution) and those of the cocktail itself. It also provides more detail about 19th-century spirits, many new and colorful anecdotes and details about Thomas' life, and a number of particularly notable, delicious, and influential cocktails not covered in the original edition.

Beer offers an amusing and informative account of the art and science of brewing, examining the history of brewing, and how the brewing process has evolved through the ages. The third edition features more information concerning the history of beer, especially in the United States; British, Japanese, and Egyptian beer; beer in the context of health and nutrition; and the various styles of beer. Author Charles Bamforth has also added detailed information on prohibition, Sierra Nevada, and life as a maltster.

As historian Mark Essig reveals in Lesser Beasts, swine have such a bad reputation for precisely the same reasons they are so valuable as a source of food: they are intelligent, self-sufficient, and omnivorous. What's more, he argues, we ignore our historic partnership with these astonishing animals at our peril.

In a tale as twisted as any spy thriller, discover how three women delivered critical evidence of Axis war crimes to Allied forces during World War II: “Mazzeo is a fascinating storyteller” (New York Journal of Books). In 1944, news of secret diaries kept by Italy's Foreign Minister...

Buon appetito! Everyone loves Italian food. But how did the Italians come to eat so well? The answer lies amid the vibrant beauty of Italy's historic cities. For a thousand years, they have been magnets for everything that makes for great eating: ingredients, talent, money, and power. Italian food is city food. Delizia! is much more than a history of Italian food. It is a history of Italy told through the flavors and character of its cities.

In this authoritative but light-hearted account of beers gone by, archaeologist Tate Paulette brings the famous "land between the rivers" back to life in vivid detail. We meet not only the beers of ancient Mesopotamia, but also the people who brewed them and drank them, the places where these people lived and worked, the taverns and temples and tombs where they did their drinking, the stories they told about beer, their preferred styles of drinking, their brewing equipment and drinking paraphernalia, the gods and goddesses who governed their lives and who were also partial to a drink.

On Horsemanship, also sometimes titled The Art of Horsemanship, is a treatise written about 350 BCE by the Athenian historian, soldier, and student of Socrates, Xenophon (c. 430-354 BC). The treatise is a "hands-on" manual which deals with the selection, care, and training of horses in general.

Why are there restaurants? Why would anybody consider eating alongside perfect strangers in a loud and crowded room to be an enjoyable pastime? To find the answer, Rebecca Spang takes us back to France in the eighteenth century, when a restaurant was not a place to eat but a quasi-medicinal bouillon not unlike the bone broths of today.

The British have a relationship with their food that is unlike that of any other country. Once something that was never discussed in polite company, it is now something with which the nation is obsessed. But are we at last developing a food culture or are we just going through the motions? Eating for England is an entertaining, detailed, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek observation of the British and their food, their cooking, their eating, and how they behave in restaurants.

As Julia Child once said, “It is hard to imagine a civilization without onions.” Historically, she’s been right—and not just in the kitchen. Uniquely flourishing in just about every climate and culture around the world, onions have provided the essential basis not only for sautés, stews, and stir fries, but for medicines, metaphors, and folklore. Abundantly commonplace yet extraordinarily indispensable, the onion is Kurlansky's newest global food fixation as he sets out to explore how and why the crop reigns over Wales to Italy and everywhere in between.

Sweeping across generations from the 1600s to the present day and inspired by the true story of the leader of the infamous Gunpowder Plot, Nicola Cornick’s latest historical mystery combines past and present story lines that fans of Philippa Gregory and Susanna Kearsley will devour. 1605: Anne...

One of the classic works on interior decoration, Edith Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses offers a comprehensive look at the history and character of turn-of-the-century interior design. Co-written with architect Ogden Codman, Jr., this invaluable reference provides us with numerous keen and practical axioms for house design, such as (1) The better the house, the less need for curtains, and (2) the height of a well-proportioned doorway should be twice its width.

Acclaimed cookbook author Jessica B. Harris weaves an utterly engaging history of African American cuisine, taking the listener on a harrowing journey from Africa across the Atlantic to America, and tracking the trials that the people and the food have undergone along the way. From chitlins and ham hocks to fried chicken and vegan soul, Harris celebrates the delicious and restorative foods of the African American experience and details how each came to form an important part of African American culture, history, and identity.

Every home cook has thoughts on the right and wrong ways to use spices. These beliefs are passed down in family recipes and pronounced by television chefs, but where do such ideas come from? Many are little better than superstition, and most serve only to reinforce a cook's sense of superiority or cover for their insecurities. It doesn't have to be this way. These notes On Spice come from three generations of a family in the spice trade, and dozens upon dozens of their collected spice guides and stories.

The Erstwhile brings readers back to the singular world and mind of B. Catling, continuing the groundbreaking storytelling of his hit The Vorrh. In London and Germany, strange beings are reanimating themselves. They are the Erstwhile, the angels that failed to protect the Tree of Knowledge, and...

In this engaging, anecdotal history of food, world conquest, and desire, a chef-turned-journalist tells the story of three legendary cities, Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam, that transformed the globe in the quest for spice.

A brand new novel in the “sometimes whimsical, often insightful, always absorbing” (Shelf Awareness) Dove Pond series that follows a gifted historian investigating the mystery of a love story lost to time. When an antique tin of love letters is found hidden in her family home, noted...

Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. In this updated edition of the classic work, Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade, from the disastrous "Coffee Crisis" that caused global prices to plummet to the rise of the Fair Trade movement and the "third-wave" of quality-obsessed coffee connoisseurs.

The decade-long Great Depression, a period of shifts in the country's political and social landscape, forever changed the way America eats. Before 1929, America's relationship with food was defined by abundance. But the collapse of the economy, in both urban and rural America, left a quarter of all Americans out of work and undernourished - shattering long-held assumptions about the limitlessness of the national larder.