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Title: History of Food by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, Anthea Bell ISBN: 0-631-19497-5 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: September, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (6 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Poor evidence of sources
Comment: Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat provides a rather feeble excuse for her limited bibliography and fails to provide adequate citations for many of her assertions. There is an obvious French slant on history throughout the book. And in some cases there appear to be insertions of "local legends" or Francophile dreams for which there is no other evidence than Toussaint-Samat's statement (i.e., fabricated quotations attributed to Charlemagne's biographer in the cheese story on pages 116-117 - look it up!). In a generalized, broad-spectrum work such as this it would be all but impossible to check every fact. But, that being said, the book contains hundreds if not thousands statements of fact and her uncritical (at best!) inclusion of information for which there is no evidence in the source cited brings the whole book, as an authoritative source, into question.
Rating: 2
Summary: It shows its age
Comment: I have serious misgivings about the facts presented in this book. The original French text was written in the 20's. I was given this book as I am working on a masterwork on the cultural history of Olives and Olive oil. In this respect she often jumps to the wrong conculsion, and makes broad judgements that have been discounted by anthropology since the 1960's. For instance she lists oil stores in ancient Babylonia as being olive oil. We know from further scholership that this would have been sesame oil, and that olive oil was a fuel and not a consumptive in that culture at the time. This causes me to question the entire book. This may be an interesting read, but at least with respect to Olives and Olive oil, there is much better out there.
Rating: 5
Summary: Simply delicious
Comment: I've been reading, re-reading, and browsing in this book since I bought it almost a year ago. I find it quite extraordinary. As a lifelong historian, I appreciate the exceptional research and the bright way the translator spins anecdotal hisotry into readable passages. As a single man who just started cooking some months ago, I find this book is also a "brain prompter." To be able to read about the history of the spices and foods which one prepares is like a double meal, one for the body and another for the mind.
While the book, naturally, follows strongly the French historical line, nevertheless, it's still fascinating to read, cull through, and refresh the memory about even simple foods like bread, pork, and fish. If you're a cook of any kind, with this book you'll be able to spark dinner conversations with snippets of history about what you've served.
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Title: Food in History by Reay Tannahill ISBN: 0517884046 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 10 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto ISBN: 0743226445 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 20 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Culture of the Fork by Giovanni Rebora, Albert Sonnenfeld ISBN: 0231121504 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson, Soun Vannithone ISBN: 0192115790 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: December, 1999 List Price(USD): $65.00 |
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Title: Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present (European Perspectives) by Jean Louis Flandrin, Massimo Montanari, Albert Sonnenfeld, John-Louis Flandrin ISBN: 0140296581 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 31 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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