American Appetites

American Appetites brings together compelling firsthand testimonies describing the nation's collective eating habits throughout times. Beginning with Native American folktales that document foundational food habits and ending with contemporary discussions about how to obtain adequate, healthful, and ethical food, this volume reveals that the quest for food has always been about more than physical nourishment, demonstrating how changing attitudes about issues ranging from patriotism and gender to technology and race all affect how we set out table and satisfy our appetites. Readers will vicariously experience hunger and satiation, culinary pleasure and gustatory distress from perspectives as varied as those of enslaved Africans, nineteenth century socialites, battle-weary soliders, impoverished immigrants, and prominent politicians. Regardless of their status or the peculiarities of their historical moment, the Americans whose stories are captured here reveal that US history cannot be understood apart from an examination of what drives and what feeds the American appetite.