Food Fights & Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste

by Tom Nealon

In this eclectic book of food history, Tom Nealon takes on such overlooked themes as carp and the Crusades, brown sauce and Byron, and chillies and cannibalism, and suggests that hunger and taste are the twin forces that secretly defined the course of civilization. Through war and plague, revolution and migration, people have always had to eat. What and how they ate provoked culinary upheaval around the world as ingredients were traded and fought over, and populations desperately walked the line between satiety and starvation. Parallel to the history books, a second, more obscure history was also being recorded in the cookbooks of the time, which charted the evolution of meals and the transmission of ingredients around the world. Food Fights and Culture A Secret History of Taste explores the mysteries at the intersection of food and society, and attempts to make sense of the curious area between fact and fiction. Beautifully illustrated with material from the collection of the British Library, this wide-ranging book addresses some of the fascinating, forgotten stories behind everyday dishes and processes. Among many conspiracies and controversies, the author meditates on the connections between the French Revolution and table settings, food thickness and colonialism, and lemonade and the Black Plague.

Genres: History, Food, Nonfiction, Food History, Cooking, Food Writing, Politics

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 14, 2017

Reviews

[Mara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Начинали за здравие, закончили как обычно.
Я изначально покупала книгу, чтобы почитать про историю кулинарии, и первая глава была как раз про то, про что я ожидала, а вот дальше…
Оказалось, что десять глав книги — это десять разных статей, никак между собой не связанных и относящихся больше к современному миру, чем к «истории».
Думаю, что если подходить к книге с иными, чем мои, ожиданиями, то она хороша: много тематических иллюстраций, качественная полиграфия, хороший перевод, лёгкий язык. Это скорее книга-журнал, чем книга. Такой формат мне понравился. Правда, из-за количества иллюстраций объём текста невелик, но я бы не назвала это недостатком.
Было бы интересно почитать больше подобных книг — на разные темы.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was first introduced to "Food Fights and Culture Wars" through an excerpt in the "Boston Globe" newspaper on lemonade's potential influence on the lack of plague outbreak in Paris. These food-related tales are not terribly cohesive as book and the lemonade excerpt that I'd already read was definitely the best section of the book. Overall, I'd encourage most readers to simply Google the lemonade excerpt to learn a little food history. However, it is a short book that you can skim through to learn more about carp, extracts, barbeque, pastry and more. Be prepared for rambling text, but interesting photographs and advertisements that chronicle the history of food.

[Tom · Rating 1 out of 5]

The formatting of this ebook makes it nearly illegible. Diminished in size to fit text boxes, the font is very small and evidently cannot be adjusted.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is arranged where every topic is a chapter. Some chapters were so engaging, with interesting historical context, evidence supporting what was being said and a clear picture of why it was important. Others chapters... not so much. The author rambles through anecdotes and personal opinions and you come away with no real information.

[Svetlana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Вообще два хотела поставить, так выбесилась. Все самое хорошее в этой книге - это огромное количество иллюстраций. И иногда упоминания каких-то фактов, которые могут побудить изучить дальше тему (я например, ничего не знала и не слышала о кондитерской войне).
Все остальное - попытки натянуть сову на глобус. Неумелая подтасовка кулинарии в исторические события. Сначала читаешь и веришь каждому слову, к 3 -4 главе начинает немного дёргаться глаз, под конец читается как какая-то шизофазия.

[Lizzy B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply delightful. Wittily-written essays interspersed by historical illustrations that are extremely helpful in understanding the ol’ times and their ways of thinking. The sections on carp and lemonade were particularly fascinating, and I heartily endorse the author’s disdain for French food-worship.

I should caveat that some of the author’s ideas seem to be theoretical and/or tongue-in-cheek (e.g. cacao starting wars, lemonade preventing the plague), but while keeping this in mind, this is nonetheless a great book for anyone who wants to learn about how people ate throughout history.

[mylogicisfuzzy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nealon sets out to '... fit food back into the historical narrative... to reconcile its place in our lives with its absence from written history'. Unfortunately, what he has produced is little more than waffle to accompany illustrations from books in the British Library collection. If not for the illustrations, this book would go straight to the bin. Unsupported claims (there are no references and no bibliography - it's really my fault for not looking for bibliography pages before purchasing), unfunny anecdotes and statements that are just ridiculous, including:

"One of the only places where you can detect any real development of cannibal cookery is in English literature." (namely Shakespeare, Victorian children's story and Dickens...)

"...both the French and American Revolution were motivated by the ideal of free chocolate for all..." (funny, I thought they had something to do with taxation and civil rights)

The chapters are also jumbled - they're meant to be chronological I think but it doesn't work well, the whole thing is a mess.

[Jessica-Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first heard about Food Fights and Culture Wars on the podcast The Sporkful when the host did an interview with Nealon. I figured this would be my cup of tea and I was right.

I enjoyed this book because it is not a scholarly examination of the history and culture of food. Instead, Food Fights and Culture Wars is conversational.

The book takes on specific short topics that by themselves are easy to digest and together show some of the underlying influence food has had on society as a whole. Tom Nealon reminds me a little of someone like Alton Brown.

The format of this book is a lot like when a TV show like Good Eats would show a brief aside about the historical significance of a specific item of food. It gives you enough information to be interesting, without giving you so much that you wonder when you can move on to something else.

It is also as much about the personality the author and the delivery of the information as it is about the information itself. Nealon does not shy away from allowing his own personality, ideas, and opinions about food be part of the story, which I found interesting in and of itself.

To give you more of an idea about the feel of the book. Food Fights and Culture Wars will give you interesting things you can bring up at boring dinner parties where the only thing people are taking about is how the chicken is just lovely. (and it knows it, seeing as there is a whole chapter about dinner parties and the French Revolution) It will give you zingers about carp during the crusades, the commercialization/suburbification of barbaque, how lemon aid may have helped prevent rats from carrying the plague, and good old fashion cannibalism. You know, the fun stuff about food history!

Food Fights and Culture Wars also has an eye for design. The writing is structured on the pages in columns and includes many full page historical reference illustrations and advertisements. This was not only nice to look at, but helped the book set the tone for different historical periods.

The design makes Food Fights and Culture Wars a lot shorter than the page count and size may suggest, so it is also easy to breeze through. Although I wasn't always impressed with the cropping and layout of some of the pages, such as when full page illustrations appear after a mid-sentence break. I do like it when non-fiction takes the time to be visually interesting and colourful. So points for that!

All in all this was worth checking out. I enjoyed reading it and will equally enjoy re-telling some of the interesting stories from within it.

[Ken Rideout · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too many words to be a picture book but so many pictures that you can read this book in an afternoon. At first I thought I was reading a scholarly book about the ever-popular subject of history and food, but the author's flippant and casual style eventually left me wondering how much I actually learned and how much was just one man's take on it all. I understand many of the anecdotes were tongue-in-cheek, but I just didn't go for it. Here's a break-down of what I think I learned chapter-by-chapter:
1: Carp was the original fish-farm food and the Romans were big on it. Lots of bones, but you can make good jelly from it.
2:Lemonade is the original soft drink and its popularity with street-vendors may have deterred plague-infested fleas from giving you the plague. BTW, those weird plague-era doctor's masks with huge fake-noses were for filtering the air with garlic, vinegar and what-not to help prevent doctors from getting the plague from their patients.
3:Dehydrated soup and bouillon has a sordid history and leads straight to monosodium glutamate and the umami taste. Much easier to get glutamate from yeast than grinding up meat.
4:Europeans are fascinating by cannibalism. The British are fascinated by guilt-free cannibalism (oh my, they hid human meat in this pie!)
5:The author really doesn't like dinner parties and points out their use (and origin?) by the nobility of France as a political weapon.
6:A1 steak sauce and Worcester sauce are the survivors from a sauce-crazy era in colonial days. They are mash-ups of existing sauces.
7:The spread of chocolate is linked with violence. Modern chocolate is very muted compared to the original due to heavy processing.
8:Real bbq is indirect heat for long periods of time so the meat gets tender without burning. The author links the oppression of modern man by the state with the proliferation of back-yard 'grills' (seriously, he does!).
9:I could not understand what this chapter's theme was. Favorite foods of war generals? The role of pastries in war times?
10:Sauces used be thin and watery. Then we said rich and creamy means you're living the good life so now everyone uses thickeners to make thick sauces.

The pictures are meticulously credited and explained, but there are no citations to support the author's contentions about historical events. I imagine this book grew from thematic collection of pictures and the words were an after-thought.

[Red · Rating 2 out of 5]

Огромный недостаток этой книги -- отсутствие предупреждения, что она состоит из баек, ну или хотя бы приправленных домыслами автора исторических событий. Этого предупреждения там нет, так что читаешь на полном серьезе, пока не понимаешь, насколько это всё замешано с чушью.
Но если сразу читать её как сборник баек -- эта книга прекрасна, любопытна, местами смешит, местами заставляет задуматься и усомниться. Тогда можно веселиться от чтения про ополоумевших от употребления какао устроителей Бостонского чаепития.
Прекрасные иллюстрации и прекрасные байки. Оценка была бы выше, если бы книга не пыталась дурить мне голову.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a lovely little food book! In this book, we learn about 10 different food related histories. There are several topics covered included carp, cannibalism and thickening agents. I admit that some of the chapters were a bit dull to me as I didn't have interest in certain topics. However, the illustrations and paintings and photographs made up for the boring text as they were tons of fun to look at!

[Misha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I managed this near in a sitting- there's very little of substance. It's very much a coffee-table book, but only read it if you're waiting on a friend and it's their table! Lots of pictures. And except that most of the essays are involving food and conflicts on the same essay, this book doesn't live up to it's title. Taste? No where really mentioned. This is a sort of popular history lite.

[Diane · Rating 1 out of 5]

A little scattered....hard to go from cannibalism to Worcestershire sauce from one illustrated page to the next. Although richly illustrated, the imagery didn't always seem pertinent without further notation.

In some cases, it was difficult to differentiate between opinion and fact. However, there were some very interesting bits scattered throughout the volume.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The illustrations are fascinating, but the essays fall somewhat short. Perhaps read singly they are more entertaining, but they aren't a great source for food history, and the humor seems forced.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining, and with beautiful art throughout, but not quite the serious history Nealon himself says he's trying to produce. (Pun intended.) The chapter on cannibalism is outstanding, though.

[Lucile Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

91. Food Fights and Culture Wars: a Secret History of Taste by Tom Nealon
This book was beautiful visually and I learned a lot about food and history. The history of carp in the Crusades was especially relevant, even though I have never attempted gifilte fish. The use of lemons against plague was a fun chapter, as was the section on Brown Sauces, which are one of my culinary sins. There are pages from historical cook books with unheard of ingredients. There are table settings, a discussion of cannibalism, and chilies. I really enjoyed the section on barbecue, which should really be done in a pit. As someone who has difficulty with food, this book did something I really needed: it made me hungry!

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one had been on my “to read” list for a while and I’m glad I finally read it. That being said, it was not quite what I was hoping. A fun and easy read, the book is organized into chapters by topic and each chapter has many interesting illustrations. There were nuggets of great information here and there, but overall, it sort of read like a History or Sci Channel show – good ideas, a liberal sprinkling of facts, and lots of pictures and conversation. The amount of fact/research for each chapter felt a little uneven, with some chapters (dinner parties, cannibalism) seemed very light-weight from research/evidence point of view. An enjoyable read? Certainly, but more like a fun conversation over dinner than a focused lecture or talk, which is what I was wanting.

[Devon · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 ?

okay i have some major complaints about this one but did enjoy reading it
quick list:
1. WHERE ARE THE SOURCES-- like the author makes a lot of claims but there are literally no sources at the end of the book-- i don't understand how one can write and publish a history book without them-- it's just bad taste
2. the humor inserted in got a little tedious and annoying-- especially because he was making fake claims with the humor-- but what happens when someone believes his claims bUT YOU CANT CHECK IT IN THE BOOK BECAUSE THERE ARENT ANY SOURCES
3. some of the presentation was too surface level but i suppose THIS IS ALSO A SOURCES ISSUE

i will be using this as a jumping point to further research but ugh idk

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy, fun and often very funny read. As other reviewers note, it is a ramble through various topics about the history of food. The illustrations are gorgeous and well worth closely studying-the marginalia within the medieval texts (" Rabbit in herbs") etc. was well worth the time. The book can be summed up with this quote, about the invention of extracts: " The notion of meat extract is similar to the French technique for making glacé de viande', reducing meat stock to a concentrated paste. Industrialization added speed, efficiency and a heaped dollop of something quite revolting to the process".

[Sergey Kryzhanovsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

На редкость бестолковая книга. Настолько разочаровала, что обзор пишу через неделю от прочтения.

Во-первых, войн и битв в ней нет. Просто такое дурацкое название.

Во-вторых, едва ли не половину книги занимают картинки. Потому объём потенциально полезной и интересной информации уменьшен вдвое.

В-третьих, автор натащил из интернета всем известные общие факты про всем известные продукты, оформил в разрозненные главки, да и всё. Это может сделать студент первого курса журфака. Или школьник, если в силах связать пару слов. Но зачем ради этого издавать оригинал, потом переводить и издавать перевод? Никакой иной работы проделано не было.

Не рекомендую.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a mixed bag. Each chapter focused on a different food subject- most of them were about a specific item (like Worcestershire sauce, or Bovril, or lemonade during the plague, etc.) and were extremely interesting, whereas other chapters covered a broader subject (like dinner parties or cannibalism) and ended up too vague and wishy-washy as a result (though the fact that this dude managed to make cannibalism boring is quite a feat).

Contains a huge and expertly curated picture/illustration/manuscript collection (several per page, all of which are wonderful)

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! (My reading speed suffered immensely because I fell violently back into my A Song of Ice & Fire fandom bullshit due to anticipating the new season of House of the Dragon, but I PROMISE I enjoyed this book!)

It's no deep read, and it has many pictures padding the pages, but the writing style is very witty in a way I appreciate, and most of the stories were full to the brim with fun facts that I'll carry in my brain for many years to come.

[Ashur · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, but I think I was hoping for a bigger, denser text that's more academic in tone. I read it much more quickly than I suspected, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just not what I expected. Good for when you want an interesting "light" history/culture book. Full of gorgeous illustrations from a wide range of historical sources. If I could, I'd rate it 3.5 stars.

[Lacivard Mammadova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-fiction sevirəm. Yumor hissinə malik müəllifi oxumağı sevirəm. Elmi izahları, maraqlı məlumatları anlayacağımız zarafatlarla, sıxılmadan çatdıran kitab isə qiymətsizdir! İndi isə təsəvvür edin ki, bu kitab yemək haqqındadır. Niyə 4? az idi ona görə. Gözüm doymadı. Daha geniş izaha yer var idi və verilməli idi, nələrinsə üstündən eləcə ötüb keçmək düzgün olmadı. Natamamlıq hissi qaldı.

[Bail3y · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book was organized very poorly as if the aesthetics of the book mattered more than the information. Promising topic but the author used verbose, stumbling language often with a lot of interjections that distracted from the actual subject matter.
The author also did not include ANY source material for his claims. This is an enormous issue for me. Citing pictures is not enough.

[Sarcasticsoq · Rating 3 out of 5]

Очень много приятных иллюстраций, хорошо оформлена книга. Фривольное авторское шутливое настроение, многие выводы в шутку притянуты за уши. Это -- не самый глубоко проработанный (но это и не нужно было) взгляд на исторические события с точки зрения культуры еды и продуктов. У меня стоит на полке в книжном шкафу, чтобы можно было взять и просто полистать.

[Sesana · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of brief essays about food history, with plentiful illustrations. There's nothing like an overarching narrative or even cohesive theme outside of food history here. But the essays are generally pretty interesting, and some of the illustrations are really fascinating to look at. More supposition than I generally like in my history, though.

[Irina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Очень хорошо и с юмором написано. Подумалось, что ведь и вправду еда так сильно влияет на нашу жизнь, что вполне может статься вовремя предложенная какому-нибудь злобному диктатору пироженка могла бы спасти мир:)

[Ena Nealon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most interesting and engaging history books I have ever read. I absolutely loved every second of it, to the point where I forgot I was actually learning something. There was such a wide variety of information, and I found the whole book utterly hilarious. I eagerly await his next book.

[Juu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super enjoyed this book. It made reading about history not stale, because of the focus on food (which I love) but also its humorous commentary and well-written yet light prose. Also novel in the way the author attempts to find commonalities between different culture's cuisines. Highly recommend!