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Edible
Pizza: A Global History
You can pick Chicago deep dish, Sicilian, or New York-style; pan crust or thin crust; anchovies or pepperoni. There are countless ways to create the dish called pizza, as well as a never-ending debate on the best way of cooking it. Now Carol Helstosky documents the fascinating history and cultural life of this chameleon-like food in Pizza .
Originally a food for the poor in eighteenth-century Naples, the pizza is a source of national and regional pride as well as cultural identity in Italy, Helstosky reveals. In the twentieth century, the pizza followed Italian immigrants to America, where it became the nation’s most popular dish and fueled the rise of successful fast-food corporations such as Pizza Hut and Domino’s. Along the way, Helstosky explains, pizza has been adapted to local cuisines and has become a metaphor for cultural exchange. Pizza also features several recipes and a wealth of illustrations, including a photo of the world’s largest and most expensive pizza—sprinkled with edible 24-karat gold shavings and costing over $4000.
Whether you love sausage and onions on your pizza or unadorned cheese, Pizza has enough offerings to satiate even the pickiest of readers.
Originally a food for the poor in eighteenth-century Naples, the pizza is a source of national and regional pride as well as cultural identity in Italy, Helstosky reveals. In the twentieth century, the pizza followed Italian immigrants to America, where it became the nation’s most popular dish and fueled the rise of successful fast-food corporations such as Pizza Hut and Domino’s. Along the way, Helstosky explains, pizza has been adapted to local cuisines and has become a metaphor for cultural exchange. Pizza also features several recipes and a wealth of illustrations, including a photo of the world’s largest and most expensive pizza—sprinkled with edible 24-karat gold shavings and costing over $4000.
Whether you love sausage and onions on your pizza or unadorned cheese, Pizza has enough offerings to satiate even the pickiest of readers.
145 pages, Hardcover
First published October 7, 2008
17 people are currently reading
333 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
June 24, 2019
Despite its diminutive size, page for page, this book is a far better resource on the history and development of pizza than all of the Food Network/Cooking Channel shows combined. It's very thorough, covering the origins of pizza (touching on related cuisines from other cultures) and its spread to the US and elsewhere. Covers all styles of pizza: Neapolitan, New York, New Haven, Chicago deep-dish, and various foreign incarnations of pizza. Not a lot of illustration. The tone is rather formal, a serious documentary rather than a tongue-in-cheek narrative led by a chuckling Food Network host. There are also a few recipes in the back. I picked this up at Chicago's Printers Row Literary Festival out of a display of the 'Edible' series by the University of Chicago Press. Other volumes include Coffee, Soups, Sandwiches, Salmon, Tequila, Nuts, Berries, Pancakes, Spices, Pie, Barbecue, Chillies, and more.
September 27, 2023
PIZZA!
What's not to like.
Also Dominos delivery driver deaths due to the "30 minutes or it's free" policy is crazy. Look it up.
What's not to like.
Also Dominos delivery driver deaths due to the "30 minutes or it's free" policy is crazy. Look it up.
October 28, 2017
Fantastic little book that uses historical context, gastronomic analysis, and socio-cultural anthropological reflections to tell the story of one of my favourite foods.
June 27, 2022
It never mentioned the word calzone, or that sausage stuffed pizza is a thing or that students just get a stick of french bread, layer with tomato purée and cheese and bang it under the grill . It also says pizza express prices are relatively low , I’ve only been once because it was too expensive 😂. Enjoyed it but wanted to have a little moan about what it missed
January 15, 2024
Would you accept as truth if I told you that during the past 90 years there has been a hushed pizza rebellion?
And would you have faith in fact that this upheaval has not been the first in mankind’s history, but surely the prevalent and most extensive?
Trust me when I tell, you -- the Etruscans, Greeks, Romans, Italians and, about 100 years before, Italian migrants to America all seem to have relished their own pizza insurgencies.
Slower moving pizza rebellions may have occurred 14,000 years ago, maybe even further back.
My consort, the grace of my life, a tranquil, composed woman (one who doth teach the torches to burn bright) unexpectedly asked me, whether or not I knew anything about the antiquity of Pizzas.
Well I know a lot. Just that I did not express about it much to her. She is a youngster. Uninformed of countless stuffs.
A food historian would delineate Pizza as horizontal bread baked from leavened dough, exaggerated with toppings that can comprise, but are not limited to, cheese and a tomato-based sauce.
If we consent to this definition, it may be difficult to discover when pizza was first eaten.
In 2200 BC, we know for a fact that the Egyptian flat bread was occasionally topped with a feast known as “dukka.”
Substantiation of flat bread in Italy from 2000 years before the birth of Christ is evocative of the fact that proto-pizza may not have been limited to Egypt, even 4000 years ago.
From 930-730 BC, the Persians, Etruscans and Greeks started making something we can categorize more clearly as pizza.
However, there is much we do not yet know.
In 12,000 BC, Egyptians ground harsh grass seeds into flour, but to create what food harvests?
The flour could have made flat bread, some perchance topped with toppings.
The first pizza could predate recorded history. It could have been as indispensable a part of early human civilization as leather and the flint knife.
Virgil’s Aeneid (19 BC) designates a meal where both the plate and what was on it were eaten, in other words, pizza was and is a meal on an appetizing plate.
Flat bread preserved under Vesuvius’s volcanic ash in 79 AD was divided into eight equal segments like pizza of today. Pizza’s functional value was and is its convenience, palatability and nutritional value, but for how many millennia and in which countries?
An aerated crust was undoubtedly easygoing and stress-free to eat than other foods, allowing teeth and their owners to last longer, feasibly allowing human survival as did protective clothing and the spear.
The history of pizza has been somewhat easier to track during the past two millennia. What has unmistakably continued relentless throughout untold millennia is the appeal of pizza, its effectiveness, ability to gratify and usefulness.
Into four chapters has this book been divided:
1) History Lesson on a Plate: Pizza in Italy
2) Pizza Americana
3) The Little Meal That Could: Pizza’s Conquest of the World
4) The Future of Pizza
Chapter 1 brands how and why pizza became one of the most pervasive foods in the 18th and 19th century Naples and then spread to the rest of Italy in the 20th century.
Chapter 2 inspects the antiquity of pizza in America, following the pathways of Neapolitan settlers through cities like New York, Boston and New Haven, Connecticut.
Chapter 3 observes the universal proportions of this alteration as it trajectories the extent of pizza around the world, principally through the channels of pizza franchise or chain restaurants.
The last chapter looks at the prospect of this food. Pizza will endure to bring people together, differentiate them and divide them, all the while holding on to its outmoded shape and spirit: a round flatbread baked with toppings.
More precisely, there is something about the form and constituents of pizza that make it a comprehensively understood and conceptualized food: we all have some sense of what a pizza is even though we all may be putting our individual, regional or national imprint on it.
I must thank my consort yet again for connecting me with food history, after a long long time.
And would you have faith in fact that this upheaval has not been the first in mankind’s history, but surely the prevalent and most extensive?
Trust me when I tell, you -- the Etruscans, Greeks, Romans, Italians and, about 100 years before, Italian migrants to America all seem to have relished their own pizza insurgencies.
Slower moving pizza rebellions may have occurred 14,000 years ago, maybe even further back.
My consort, the grace of my life, a tranquil, composed woman (one who doth teach the torches to burn bright) unexpectedly asked me, whether or not I knew anything about the antiquity of Pizzas.
Well I know a lot. Just that I did not express about it much to her. She is a youngster. Uninformed of countless stuffs.
A food historian would delineate Pizza as horizontal bread baked from leavened dough, exaggerated with toppings that can comprise, but are not limited to, cheese and a tomato-based sauce.
If we consent to this definition, it may be difficult to discover when pizza was first eaten.
In 2200 BC, we know for a fact that the Egyptian flat bread was occasionally topped with a feast known as “dukka.”
Substantiation of flat bread in Italy from 2000 years before the birth of Christ is evocative of the fact that proto-pizza may not have been limited to Egypt, even 4000 years ago.
From 930-730 BC, the Persians, Etruscans and Greeks started making something we can categorize more clearly as pizza.
However, there is much we do not yet know.
In 12,000 BC, Egyptians ground harsh grass seeds into flour, but to create what food harvests?
The flour could have made flat bread, some perchance topped with toppings.
The first pizza could predate recorded history. It could have been as indispensable a part of early human civilization as leather and the flint knife.
Virgil’s Aeneid (19 BC) designates a meal where both the plate and what was on it were eaten, in other words, pizza was and is a meal on an appetizing plate.
Flat bread preserved under Vesuvius’s volcanic ash in 79 AD was divided into eight equal segments like pizza of today. Pizza’s functional value was and is its convenience, palatability and nutritional value, but for how many millennia and in which countries?
An aerated crust was undoubtedly easygoing and stress-free to eat than other foods, allowing teeth and their owners to last longer, feasibly allowing human survival as did protective clothing and the spear.
The history of pizza has been somewhat easier to track during the past two millennia. What has unmistakably continued relentless throughout untold millennia is the appeal of pizza, its effectiveness, ability to gratify and usefulness.
Into four chapters has this book been divided:
1) History Lesson on a Plate: Pizza in Italy
2) Pizza Americana
3) The Little Meal That Could: Pizza’s Conquest of the World
4) The Future of Pizza
Chapter 1 brands how and why pizza became one of the most pervasive foods in the 18th and 19th century Naples and then spread to the rest of Italy in the 20th century.
Chapter 2 inspects the antiquity of pizza in America, following the pathways of Neapolitan settlers through cities like New York, Boston and New Haven, Connecticut.
Chapter 3 observes the universal proportions of this alteration as it trajectories the extent of pizza around the world, principally through the channels of pizza franchise or chain restaurants.
The last chapter looks at the prospect of this food. Pizza will endure to bring people together, differentiate them and divide them, all the while holding on to its outmoded shape and spirit: a round flatbread baked with toppings.
More precisely, there is something about the form and constituents of pizza that make it a comprehensively understood and conceptualized food: we all have some sense of what a pizza is even though we all may be putting our individual, regional or national imprint on it.
I must thank my consort yet again for connecting me with food history, after a long long time.
July 25, 2023
This is a concise, compulsively readable history of pizza: a contender for the most cosmopolitan food of all time. Though I wouldn't characterize it as academically rigorous, there were plenty of reliable sources cited - historical, literary, and archival. It was a fascinating read, especially the parts going back to the Neolithic and later the Columbian Exchange (of ingredients), and eventually learning about pizza acrobatics contests and a pizza recipe for dogs. Overall, a fun and interesting way to learn more about Italian (and world) history. And now I crave pizza.
Quotes:
"Pizza has become one way of distinguishing the hip, urban America from the unhip, suburban America. It also distinguishes the two coasts from the American heartland, ethnic from white bread (or doughy soft crust) America, and even teenaged from middle-aged America. Just like in Italy, pizza has become a marker of economic class and social distinction, a gastronomic thermometer of American life." (p. 53)
"Thus, the social, corporate and technological contexts in which pizza develops tell us much about how and why pizza has become a global phenomenon. In so doing, pizza has had a dramatic impact on the world’s view of food, in particular the meaning of a meal or a snack. The standardized versions now available around the world make pizza ‘easy’ because it is fast, convenient and unpretentious. As our definition of what constitutes a meal or snack shifts to incorporate new family rhythms, work patterns and cultural practices, pizza has played an important role in the process of change. Perhaps the original ‘fast food’, pizza in its myriad forms continues to be one of the most popular foods in the world." (p. 80)
Quotes:
"Pizza has become one way of distinguishing the hip, urban America from the unhip, suburban America. It also distinguishes the two coasts from the American heartland, ethnic from white bread (or doughy soft crust) America, and even teenaged from middle-aged America. Just like in Italy, pizza has become a marker of economic class and social distinction, a gastronomic thermometer of American life." (p. 53)
"Thus, the social, corporate and technological contexts in which pizza develops tell us much about how and why pizza has become a global phenomenon. In so doing, pizza has had a dramatic impact on the world’s view of food, in particular the meaning of a meal or a snack. The standardized versions now available around the world make pizza ‘easy’ because it is fast, convenient and unpretentious. As our definition of what constitutes a meal or snack shifts to incorporate new family rhythms, work patterns and cultural practices, pizza has played an important role in the process of change. Perhaps the original ‘fast food’, pizza in its myriad forms continues to be one of the most popular foods in the world." (p. 80)
December 1, 2018
GISH | Wasn't impressed. | One of the GISH items this year was "email a pizza". I went about this by emailing a kindle book titled Pizza, which meant the recipient got an email that said "Robyn has sent you Pizza!". So the important part of this was the title. Obviously, though, I was going to read the book. This just wasn't structured well enough to be a book over an article. Back in high school it was deeply impressed upon me that only poor academics include "in the next paragraph/section/chapter I will demonstrate..." and that's all over this book. Just do it, don't tell me you're going to do it! And afterward, don't tell me that you have done it! There were also a few places where the author repeated herself as if the reader might have skipped earlier chapters.
December 27, 2017
A short history of how pizza began as working-class food in Naples and became, after World War II one of the most popular, global fast foods. The volume, part of Reakion Books, Edible series, contains numerous color illustrations, a recipe list and sources for further reading.
March 9, 2022
The Naples-based history of this book was interesting but I thought it fell short when discussing modern pizzas and types of pizzas and/or crust origins. Short, not bad, but could have more fleshed out sections. Solid, shrugging, it's not a total waste of time 3.
April 13, 2018
With the help of this book, I wrote the final essay of my college career and began with this line:
What do Alexandre Dumas, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Herman Cain have in common?
What do Alexandre Dumas, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Herman Cain have in common?
September 7, 2020
A fair big picture look at what is pizza. Quick read but not as well written as other subject specific studies I have read.
January 25, 2022
Admirably thorough history of pizza, packed into about 120 pages.
July 8, 2023
Feels pretty sloppy. Some facts are corroborated elsewhere, but not all, and the organisation is so scattered that any historiographical value is destroyed.
January 16, 2025
yummy delicious extravagant sexy
July 20, 2025
It’s really a four star book but I love pizza so it gets the 5th star. Nice little concise historical text.
May 10, 2010
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore! When a book shits on your brain like a pile of stale crust, that's a bore.
I know a lot of pizza, but I don't profess to know everything, so I read the pizza volume in the Edible Global History series. Maybe Ken Albala set too high of a standard with his "Pancake" edition, because nothing else has been very good since. The author Carol Helstosky is an associate professor of history at the University of Denver, but you wouldn't have guessed it, because the book reads like somebody's thesis on pizza. One that was written in 24 hours fueled by lots of bad coffee.
While the information and history presented is rich and well-detailed, the proofreader in me picked at every nitty gritty faux pas of literacy in the book like anchovies off a pizza - and I hate copy editing. I frequently ran into the exact same phrase re-used like a ratty old paper bag - sometimes EVEN less than a paragraph apart. This is sloppier than bad mozarella - I am sorry, but even if the writer didn't come through, did the editor not catch it? Commercialized, standardized pizza is for the lazy, post-beer slug to order by phone, but a theoretical and insightful book about pizza (supposedly) should be a lot more conscientious in style. And speaking of style, the writing is certainly akin to an offering from a Pizza Hut, as opposed to a Verace Pizza Napoletana certified wood-fired pie. (See, I did learn something good from the book.)
Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, there were some fine toppings. I enjoyed reading about how margherita pizza was invented, and Professor Helstosky makes some fine analyses of the status of pizza – the conventionalization of pizza was what made it popular, even as purists decried the mass production and consumption. If not, there might not be cultures all around the world using “pizza” as an umbrella term to describe anything made on flatbreads. The fact that some of the universe’s top pizzaiolis are NOT Italian is proof that, as Helstosky expounds, fact that the world is flat – just like a pizza. There’s a fine chapter on the globalization of pie and how it has been intricately woven into pop culture. In fact, does pizza even fit into any category now? It’s on its own pie-destal.
And since it is, despite its redeeming points, I truly expected the subject to be placed in a brick oven up high, blazing in glory as a poetic pizza paean was painted. I mean, who wants just a cheese pizza when you can get truffles and gold dust, or at the very least, a Chicago deep dish?
I know a lot of pizza, but I don't profess to know everything, so I read the pizza volume in the Edible Global History series. Maybe Ken Albala set too high of a standard with his "Pancake" edition, because nothing else has been very good since. The author Carol Helstosky is an associate professor of history at the University of Denver, but you wouldn't have guessed it, because the book reads like somebody's thesis on pizza. One that was written in 24 hours fueled by lots of bad coffee.
While the information and history presented is rich and well-detailed, the proofreader in me picked at every nitty gritty faux pas of literacy in the book like anchovies off a pizza - and I hate copy editing. I frequently ran into the exact same phrase re-used like a ratty old paper bag - sometimes EVEN less than a paragraph apart. This is sloppier than bad mozarella - I am sorry, but even if the writer didn't come through, did the editor not catch it? Commercialized, standardized pizza is for the lazy, post-beer slug to order by phone, but a theoretical and insightful book about pizza (supposedly) should be a lot more conscientious in style. And speaking of style, the writing is certainly akin to an offering from a Pizza Hut, as opposed to a Verace Pizza Napoletana certified wood-fired pie. (See, I did learn something good from the book.)
Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, there were some fine toppings. I enjoyed reading about how margherita pizza was invented, and Professor Helstosky makes some fine analyses of the status of pizza – the conventionalization of pizza was what made it popular, even as purists decried the mass production and consumption. If not, there might not be cultures all around the world using “pizza” as an umbrella term to describe anything made on flatbreads. The fact that some of the universe’s top pizzaiolis are NOT Italian is proof that, as Helstosky expounds, fact that the world is flat – just like a pizza. There’s a fine chapter on the globalization of pie and how it has been intricately woven into pop culture. In fact, does pizza even fit into any category now? It’s on its own pie-destal.
And since it is, despite its redeeming points, I truly expected the subject to be placed in a brick oven up high, blazing in glory as a poetic pizza paean was painted. I mean, who wants just a cheese pizza when you can get truffles and gold dust, or at the very least, a Chicago deep dish?
March 16, 2014
Honestly, I don't understand the comments on this book. I was given this book by a friend and I read it last month. It was a fun read and I learned a lot about the history of pizza. I have read other books in the series and they are all supposed to describe how a food became popular throughout the world in just a few chapters. I think the author did a good job comparing pizza's history in Italy with it's history in the United States then describing how it became popular everywhere else. Some people reviewing this book were overly negative but I don't think they understood what the book was supposed to be about. This book isn't supposed to be the last word on pizza and it is not supposed to have every last detail about the history of pizza.
I liked how the author wrote about the fast food pizza chains. I think it is funny that pizza isn't considered a fast food like, say, McDonald's hamburgers, but there are probably more Domino's and Pizza Huts around the world than McDonald's restaurants. I also liked the chapter on pizza in Italy, it is interesting to think about how mythic pizza was and still is in Italy.
I liked how the author wrote about the fast food pizza chains. I think it is funny that pizza isn't considered a fast food like, say, McDonald's hamburgers, but there are probably more Domino's and Pizza Huts around the world than McDonald's restaurants. I also liked the chapter on pizza in Italy, it is interesting to think about how mythic pizza was and still is in Italy.
July 25, 2009
C. Helstosky states, "Wherever pizza becomes popular, it takes on different meanings for those eating it." (p. 107) This is made evident by the massive amount of types of pizza availalbe around the global. Helstosky explains the humble beginnings of a now-everywhere food. The chapters are well defined and simply written. I learned a lot about the background of several pizza chains, most notably: Pizza Hut and Dominos. I would recommend this book, as well as others in the series, to other foodies interested in the who, what, where, when and why history of food.
February 2, 2016
Read for a reading challenge (category: a book with pizza or sushi). At times, the prose is dry or unorganized, but there are some interesting bits of information. I think the contradictory characteristics of pizza help explain its global appeal (as evidenced by an American franchise using an Indian model to advertise pizza in Poland):
It is both a simple Italian food produced through poverty and want, and an American celebration of abundance and wealth. It is both a local and a global food. It is both mass produced and individually customized.
September 20, 2009
Too repetitive. Badly organized. Good history, but not in order, as if the author was writing spoilers into the text herself.
Recipes seem OK; I haven't tried any.
Internet sources aren't the non-mainstream ones she mentions in her text; sources are Pizza Hut and Dominos, and others almost everyone knows.
Recipes seem OK; I haven't tried any.
Internet sources aren't the non-mainstream ones she mentions in her text; sources are Pizza Hut and Dominos, and others almost everyone knows.
March 4, 2013
This is a quick, but insightful history into the world of pizza. I partially read it because one of my pictures is used (I get a photo credit), but I thought the book provided a nice look into where pizza came from and how it evolves. It also has a bunch of recipes at the end that I'm planning on trying out.
July 5, 2009
I love this series. It is such a good idea. Cute, informative, and surprisingly scholarly - the perfect food history. I challenge anyone to argue that food isn't a useful source for social and cultural history.
October 12, 2011
Quick read but seemed repetitive at times; maybe it was due to stretching too little material into a longer book. Also, a few points were glossed over, as if the reader should already know what the author was referring to. But for a quick historical overview of pizza, this book is adequate.
January 29, 2012
Not too interesting history of pizza. I guess I learned a few things, like how Domino's and Pizza Hut really made pizza world famous and how pizza began as a poor people's food in Naples and wasn't eaten in other parts of Italy until much later.
Read
February 22, 2010Interesting
December 13, 2010
Pretty lightweight, but still an engaging introduction to pizza. The book traces the rise of pizza from a humble street food in Naples to the most popular global fast food today.
August 16, 2011
Barely even a book... more like a grocery store pamphlet about pizza.
October 30, 2017
A good, easy read, it's only 109 pages, but pretty informative.
November 12, 2015
Lol I read a book about the history of pizza. How embarrassing. But I thought it would be lighthearted and cute! But it was dry and boring a repetitive.
June 21, 2023
An intriguing book about the fascinating origin and cultural history of pizza.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews