New Book: “A Short History of the American Stomach”
A new book, “Short History of the American Stomach” will come out early next year. A description of its contents follows:
The extremes of American eating—our separate-but-equal urges to stuff and to starve ourselves—are easy to blame on the excesses of modern living. But Frederick Kaufman followed the winding road of the American intestine back to that cold morning when the first famished Pilgrim clambered off the Mayflower, and he discovered the alarming truth: We’ve been this way all along. With outraged wit and an incredible range of sources that includes everything from Cotton Mather’s diary to interviews with Amish black-market raw-milk dealers, Kaufman offers a highly selective, take-no-prisoners tour of American history by way of the American stomach. Travel with him as he tracks down our earliest foodies; discovers the secret history of Puritan purges; introduces diet gurus of the nineteenth century, such as William Alcott, who believed that nothing ought to be mashed before it is eaten; traces extreme feeders from Paul Bunyan to eating-contest champ Dale Boone (descended from Daniel, of course); and investigates our blithe efforts to re-create plants and animals that we’ve eaten to the point of extinction.
The author, Fredrick Kaufman, has a blog at AmericanStomach.com A profile of Dale Boone from a 2003 issue of Harper’s Magazine can be downloaded from that website. A transcript of a NPR interview in which Kaufman compared cooking shows to pornography is available. The release date is February 4, 2008, the same weekend as Wing Bowl 16.
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Easy Diet » New Book: “A Short History of the American Stomach†said
November 3, 2007 @ 3:18 am
[…] EatFeats (competitive eating news and database) wrote an interesting post today on New Book: “A Short History of the American Stomachâ€Here’s a quick excerpt A new book, “Short History of the American Stomach†will come out early next year. A description of its contents follows: The extremes of American eating—our separate-but-equal urges to stuff and to starve ourselves—are easy to blame on the excesses of modern living. But Frederick Kaufman followed the winding road of the American intestine back to that cold morning when the first famished Pilgrim clambered off the Mayflower, and he discovered the alarming truth: We’ve been this way all along. […]
Frederick Kaufman said
November 28, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
Thanks for the shout-out!