Near a thousand tables : a history of food / Felipe Fernández-Armesto.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fernández-Armesto, Felipe, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food--History.

Food.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 258 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First Free Press trade paperback edition.

Other Title:

Near one thousand tables

Place of Publication:

New York : Free Press, 2004.

Summary:

"In Near a Thousand Tables, Oxford historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto tells the fascinating story of food as cultural as well as culinary history - ecology as well as gastronomy." "At the heart of this engrossing book are what Fernandez-Armesto calls the eight great revolutions in the world history of food: the origins of cooking, which set humankind on a course apart from other species; the ritualization of eating, which brought magic and meaning into people's relationship with what they ate; the inception of herding and the invention of agriculture, perhaps the two greatest revolutions of all; the rise of inequality; which made food an indicator of rank and led to the development of haute cuisine; the long-range trade in food, which, practically alone, broke down cultural barriers; the ecological exchanges, which revolutionized the global distribution of plants and livestock; and, finally, the industrialization and globalization of food. Near a Thousand Tables reveals what microwave families and tube-fed astronauts have in common with pre-social hominids; why India is the source of street food in Cairo and court food in Isfahan; why the name "avocado" is derived from an Aztec anatomical term."--BOOK JACKET.

Contents:

Invention of cooking: the first revolution

Meaning of eating: food as rite and magic

Breeding to eat: the herding revolution: from "collecting" food to "producing" it

Edible earth: managing plant life for food

Food and rank: inequality and the rise of haute cuisine

Edible horizon: food and the long-range exchange of culture

Challenging evolution: food and ecological exchange

Feeding the giants: food and industrialization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-245) and index.

Local Notes:

HSP Historic Culinary Arts Collection.

ISBN:

0743227409

9780743227407

OCLC:

53473852