From the category archives:

Book reviews

Review: In Defense of Food

May 6, 2010

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

By Michael Pollan – Penguin Group
By Catherine Metzgar

Question: What should humans eat to be healthy?
Answer: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
These three seemingly simple rules for how humans should eat are offered by Michael Pollan in his book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. But the [...]

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Review: Pig Perfect

May 6, 2010

Pig Perfect: Encounters with Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them
By Peter Kaminsky
Hyperion 2005
By Laura Parente
“I pursue pork like a detective on the trail of an artful thief,” powerful words written by a serious devotee of pork and lover of ham, describing the passion in which author Peter Kaminsky embarks on “a yearlong [...]

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Review: Pet Food Politics

May 6, 2010

Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine
By Marion Nestle
University of California Press 2008.
By Kate Barkman
Pet Food Politics chronologically details the pet food recall of 2007. Although the dying pets affected in this recall were documented across the U.S., the root of the problem occurred globally.
The book slyly takes the reader from the pet [...]

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Review: Spice

May 6, 2010

Spice, The History of a Temptation
By Jack Turner
Alfred A. Knopf 2004
By Erin White
Jack Turner stated, “And so it remained until the sixteenth century, when at last the discoverers chipped away at the great edifices of medieval ignorance and fantasy, dragging the realms of spice and gold into the prosaic light of day, into the unromantic [...]

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Review: Fork It Over

May 6, 2010

Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater
By Alan Richman
Harper Perennial 2005
By Dustin Nelson
In Fork It Over, author Alan Richman blatantly states in the first chapter that “Food is life. The rest is parsley.” This remark is soon understood as the twelve-time winner of the James Beard Foundation Award elaborates about what all [...]

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Review: Eating in America

May 6, 2010

Eating In America: A History
By Waverly Root and Richard de Rochemont
Ecco 1981
By Betsy Erickson
The land of plenty, now the land of TV dinners, the United States has not fully declared its independence from Great Britain. It still has much fighting to do- especially with regard to foods and cuisine.
Professional journalists and world travelers Waverly Root [...]

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