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A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal
Riverhead Hardcover
May 2009
On Sale: May 14, 2009
416 pages
ISBN: 1594488657
EAN: 9781594488658
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A remarkable portrait of American food before World War II,
presented by the New York Times–bestselling author of Cod
and Salt. Award-winning New York Times–bestselling author Mark
Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a
younger America: Before the national highway system brought
the country closer together; before chain restaurants
imposed uniformity and low quality; and before the
Frigidaire meant frozen food in mass quantities, the
nation’s food was seasonal, regional, and traditional. It
helped form the distinct character, attitudes, and customs
of those who ate it. In the 1930s, with the country gripped by the Great
Depression and millions of Americans struggling to get by,
FDR created the Federal Writers’ Project under the New Deal
as a make-work program for artists and authors. A number of
writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and
Nelson Algren, were dispatched all across America to
chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of
local people. The project, called “America Eats,” was
abandoned in the early 1940s because of the World War and
never completed. The Food of a Younger Land unearths this forgotten literary
and historical treasure and brings it to exuberant life.
Mark Kurlansky’s brilliant book captures these remarkable
stories, and combined with authentic recipes, anecdotes,
photos, and his own musings and analysis, evokes a bygone
era when Americans had never heard of fast food and the
grocery superstore was a thing of the future. Kurlansky
serves as a guide to this hearty and poignant look at the
country’s roots. From New York automats to Georgia Coca-Cola parties, from
Arkansas possum-eating clubs to Puget Sound salmon feasts,
from Choctaw funerals to South Carolina barbecues, the WPA
writers found Americans in their regional niches and eating
an enormous diversity of meals. From Mississippi chittlins
to Indiana persimmon puddings, Maine lobsters, and Montana
beavertails, they recorded the curiosities, commonalities,
and communities of American food.
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