Near a thousand tables : a history of food / Felipe Fernández-Armesto.
"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...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
The Free Press,
c2002.
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| Subjects: |
| 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. |
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| Physical Description: | xiii, 258 p. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 0743227409 0743226445 (hc) |