the food of a younger land by mark kurlansky

I found it almost astonishing that there was no submittals included regarding Wisconsin’s cheese making, or the Friday Fish Fry (Kurlansky does include an article on a Smelt Fry from Washington State), or the state’s rich brewing heritage. It’s easy to fault this book for things that are missing. One of the projects undertaken by writers working under this program was “America Eats” where several writers were enlisted to write about American regional food traditions and that is where Kurlansky gets his material from.

Kurlansky, who has also written entire books on Oysters (“The Big Oyster: History on a Half-Shell), Cod (“Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World”) and salt (“Salt: A World History”) has combed through hundreds of submittals from a pre-WWII New Deal program called the Federal Writers Program to develop this book. From movies like “Supersize Me” and the soon-to-be-released “Food Inc.” to books like “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “Fast Food Nation” it appears America’s hunger for books and movies bashing our food system is insatiable (not that I am complaining) The title (and subtitle) of Mark Kurlansky’s newest book “The Food of a Younger Land: A portrait of American food – before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation’s food was seasonal, regional, and traditional – from the lost WPA files” would lead you to believe this will be another tome bashing the way things are while praising the way they used to be.įortunately this is not the case. Nowadays it’s fashionable to gripe about how bad the food we eat is. Mark Kurlansky – “The Food of a Younger Land” Riverhead Books 2009

The food of a younger land by mark kurlansky