Ways of Eating

SIGNED BY BOTH AUTHORS!

Through engaging stories and historical deep dives, Benjamin A. Wurgaft and Merry I. White offer new ways to understand food in relation to its natural and cultural histories and the social rules that shape our meals.Wurgaft and White use vivid storytelling to bring food practices to life, weaving stories of Panamanian coffee growers, medieval women beer makers, and Japanese knife forgers. From the Venetian spice trade to the Columbian Exchange, from Roman garum to Vietnamese nớc chấm, Ways of Eating provides an absorbing account of world food history and anthropology. Migration, politics, and the dynamics of group identity all shape what we eat, and we can learn to trace these social forces from the plate to the kitchen, the factory, and the field.

Hardcover, 256 pages
University of California Press, 2023

Benjamin A. Wurgaft is a writer and historian. His previous books include Meat Planet: Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food and Thinking in Public: Strauss, Levinas, Arendt.

Merry I. White is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University. Her previous books include Coffee Life in Japan and Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Age of Upheaval. The Japanese government has honored her work in the anthropology of Japan with the Order of the Rising Sun.