Movable Feast or Medicare for the Clueless

Movable Feast

Author: Kenneth F Kipl

In the last twenty-five years alone, the range of fruits and vegetables, even grains, that is available at most local markets has changed dramatically. Over the last 10,000 years, that change is almost unimaginable. This groundbreaking new work, from the editor of the highly regarded Cambridge World History of Food, examines the exploding global palate. It begins with the transition from foraging to farming that got underway some 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, then examines subsequent transitions in Egypt, Africa south of the Sahara, China, southeast Asia, the Indus Valley Oceanic, Europe, and the Americas. It ends with chapters on genetically modified foods, the fast food industry, the nutritional ailments people have suffered from, famine, the obesity epidemic, and a look at the future on the food front. Food, at its most basic, fuels the human body. At its most refined, food has been elevated to a position of fine art. The path food has taken through history is a fairly straightforward one; the space which it occupies today could not be more fraught. This sweeping narrative covers both ends of the spectrum, reminding us to be grateful for and delighted in a grain of wheat, as well as making us aware of the many questions that remain unanswered about what lies ahead. Did you know. . .
- That beans were likely an agricultural mistake?
- That cheese making was originated in Iran over 6000 years ago?
- That pepper was once worth its weight in gold?
- That sugar is the world's best-selling food, surpassing even wheat?
- That Winston Churchill asserted, in 1942, that tea was more important to his troops than ammunition?
- That chili concarne is one of the earliest examples of food globalization?
- That, by 1880, virtually every major city in America had a Chinese restaurant?
- That white bread was once considered too nutritious?
Kenneth Kiple reveals these facts and more within A Movable Feast.

Publishers Weekly

Recycling much historical material from the magisterial Cambridge World History of Food(which the author co-edited), this slender volume distills 10,000 years of food history into just 300 pages. While the first work was notable for its rich multiplicity of voices and deeply informed scholarship, this one is a bit of a hash, owing to its author's insistence on squeezing a far-ranging narrative into the narrow framework of globalism. Far from being a new economic concept, the globalization of food, asserts Kiple, is as old as agriculture itself (globalization being murkily defined as "a process of homogenization whereby the cuisines of the world have been increasingly untied from regional food production, and one that promises to make the foods of the world available to everyone in the world"). The strongest material examines the spread of agriculture and its ramifications: it's a paradox of civilization that increased food production encourages population growth, which invariably creates food shortages and disease. That said, gastronomes will find scraps to nibble on here and there—who knew, for example, that the Egyptians trained their monkeys to harvest grapes? (June)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Table of Contents:

Preface: A movable feast: ten millennia of food globalization; Introduction: from foraging to farming;

1. Last hunters, first farmers;
2. Building the barnyard;
3. Promiscuous plants of the northern fertile crescent;
4. Peripatetic plants of Eastern Asia;
5. Fecund fringes of the northern fertile crescent;
6. Consequences of the Neolithic;
7. Enterprise and empires;
8. Faith and foodstuffs;
9. Empires in the rubble of Rome;
10. Medieval progress and poverty;
11. Spain's New World, the Northern Hemisphere;
12. New world, new foods;
13. New foods in the Southern New World;
14. The Columbian exchange and the Old Worlds;
15. The Columbian exchange and the New Worlds;
16. Sugar and new beverages;
17. Kitchen Hispanization;
18. Producing plenty in paradise;
19. The frontiers of foreign foods;
20. Capitalism, colonialism, and cuisine;
21. Homemade food homogeneity;
22. Notions of nutrients and nutriments;
23. The perils of plenty;
24. The globalization of plenty;
25. Fast food, a hymn to cellulite;
26. Parlous plenty into the twenty-first century;
27. People and plenty in the twenty-first century.

New interesting book: Development Economics or Shooter

Medicare for the Clueless: The Complete Guide to Government Health Benefits

Author: Joan Harkins Conklin

For the more than 39 million people currently on Medicare and the million plus who join each year, navigating the murky rules and regulations of health care coverage can be a full-time job. Not anymore. For ten years, Joan Harkins Conklin has guided people through the Medicare maze, and in this straightforward, comprehensive manual, she'll show you how to sail through the Medicare bureaucracy to access the benefits you need and deserve. Getting doctor bills and hospital accounts paid quickly, making important decisions, knowing your rights, demanding refunds -- it's all here in the only reference that outlines the steps you and your family can take to optimize the program to your benefit. Written by an expert who fully understands the real-life difficulties in dealing with the health care system, Medicare for the Clueless debunks the myths, lays out the facts, and provides clear, efficient steps that put the power of Medicare in your own hands.