Here are 100 books that Eating in Theory fans have personally recommended if you like
Eating in Theory.
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I have been fascinated by “nature” since childhood, growing up on an island south of Iceland and spending summers on a farm. As a teenager, I would explore my island in the company of friends, often with a binocular and a camera at hand. There was much to explore: a towering volcano above the local community, ancient lava flows, stormy seas – and an amazing variety of seabirds. I witnessed an island being born nearby during a stunning volcanic eruption. My life and career have been heavily informed by this experience, as an anthropologist and a writer I have always somehow engaged with connections between people and their environments.
Haraway’s book struck me like lightning. Here was a book that seemed to address relations between species in terms usually restricted to humans.
Many people, including social historians, have meaningfully described social formations in terms of various kinds of dependency and collaboration, for instance, slavery, feudalism, and companionship. After all, human-animal relations deserve a similar perspective. Human relations with dogs, cats, and birds, for instance, could be described in terms of a diversity of ranks and hierarchies. For other contexts involving domestic animals (including cows, reindeer, and horses), the language of slavery and servitude might be more relevant.
Haraway’s approach not only helps to illuminate complex nuances of modern biotechnology, to me it also seems vital at a time of escalating extinctions caused by humans.
"When Species Meet is a breathtaking meditation on the intersection between humankind and dog, philosophy and science, and macro and micro cultures." -Cameron Woo, Publisher of Bark magazine
In 2006, about 69 million U.S. households had pets, giving homes to around 73.9 million dogs, 90.5 million cats, and 16.6 million birds, and spending over $38 billion dollars on companion animals. As never before in history, our pets are truly members of the family. But the notion of "companion species"-knotted from human beings, animals and other organisms, landscapes, and technologies-includes much more than "companion animals."
I study culture. Ever since I was little, I’ve been fascinated by what people think, feel, believe, have, and do. I’ve always wondered why people need things to be meaningful. Why do people need an explanation for why things happen that puts the meaning outside their own minds? I wanted to get beyond the need for things to be meaningful by themselves, so I began looking into meaning-making as a thing we do. Once I realized the process was infinitely more interesting and valuable, I read books like those on my list. I hope they spark you as much as they have me.
I love that Basso can take me so far inside someone's mind that I can begin to understand not just what they think and feel but how and why they think and feel it.
This book contains the very systems and processes that we use to make knowledge and meaning, and I love learning about a way of knowing and making meaning that is very different from mine—entirely logical, purposeful, valid, and different from mine.
This remarkable book introduces us to four unforgettable Apache people, each of whom offers a different take on the significance of places in their culture. Apache conceptions of wisdom, manners and morals, and of their own history are inextricably intertwined with place, and by allowing us to overhear his conversations with Apaches on these subjects Basso expands our awareness of what place can mean to people.
Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences…
I study culture. Ever since I was little, I’ve been fascinated by what people think, feel, believe, have, and do. I’ve always wondered why people need things to be meaningful. Why do people need an explanation for why things happen that puts the meaning outside their own minds? I wanted to get beyond the need for things to be meaningful by themselves, so I began looking into meaning-making as a thing we do. Once I realized the process was infinitely more interesting and valuable, I read books like those on my list. I hope they spark you as much as they have me.
I love this book because Tsing walks me through an increasingly complex, increasingly comprehensive understanding of how people think, feel, and make meaning and how that process is fundamental to understanding who we are as a species.
Each chapter gives me a basic yet profound bit of insight into people as meaning makers, and each chapter flows from the one(s) previous, all building toward the sort of “holy crap, I get it!” culmination that leaves me wanting to go back and read it again and again.
Tsing makes the complicated understandable and the obscure accessible.
A wheel turns because of its encounter with the surface of the road; spinning in the air it goes nowhere. Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and light; one stick alone is just a stick. In both cases, it is friction that produces movement, action, effect. Challenging the widespread view that globalization invariably signifies a "clash" of cultures, anthropologist Anna Tsing here develops friction in its place as a metaphor for the diverse and conflicting social interactions that make up our contemporary world. She focuses on one particular "zone of awkward engagement"--the rainforests of Indonesia--where in the 1980s and the…
I study culture. Ever since I was little, I’ve been fascinated by what people think, feel, believe, have, and do. I’ve always wondered why people need things to be meaningful. Why do people need an explanation for why things happen that puts the meaning outside their own minds? I wanted to get beyond the need for things to be meaningful by themselves, so I began looking into meaning-making as a thing we do. Once I realized the process was infinitely more interesting and valuable, I read books like those on my list. I hope they spark you as much as they have me.
I love that Ingold uses the concept of design to explore how people make meaning and things meaningful. By bringing me through lenses such as architecture, archaeology, and art, he shows me that design is not a process of doing but of making.
When we design, we do so by constructing meaning and knowledge. The artifacts that come from my design thinking are secondary effects of the thinking and meaning-making. I love being brought into a larger point of view on the everyday activities of my own life.
Making creates knowledge, builds environments and transforms lives. Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture are all ways of making, and all are dedicated to exploring the conditions and potentials of human life. In this exciting book, Tim Ingold ties the four disciplines together in a way that has never been attempted before. In a radical departure from conventional studies that treat art and architecture as compendia of objects for analysis, Ingold proposes an anthropology and archaeology not of but with art and architecture. He advocates a way of thinking through making in which sentient practitioners and active materials continually answer to,…
Blame it on the issues of National Geographicand books on ancient mythology I devoured as a child or my family’s obsession with Frontier House, but I’ve always been one of those people who felt misplaced in time—longing to live a life more immersed in the natural world. That yearning has only grown stronger as the world has rapidly technologized and globalized since my childhood. Luckily, I’ve been able to channel it into some fascinating work as a journalist and author writing about the environment, food systems (I’m also a lifelong foodie with a passion for traditional foods), and cultural history.
This isn’t just a book—it’s a feat of cultural anthropology, an ark of the world’s wondrous and unique food cultures on the brink of erasure due to the encroachment of industrial food and globalization. The photos are mesmerizing, and the accounts of the families are both fascinating and heartrending.
I keep this book on my desk and open it anytime I have a little downtime. I can disappear into the world of, say, subsistence farmers in Bhutan or marvel over the mouthwatering array of dishes a Turkish mom churns out for her family of six from a one-bedroom apartment in Istanbul. I never cease to be amazed—or hungry.
The age-old practice of sitting down to a family meal is undergoing unprecedented change as rising world affluence and trade, along with the spread of global food conglomerates, transform eating habits worldwide. HUNGRY PLANET profiles 30 families from around the world--including Bosnia, Chad, Egypt, Greenland, Japan, the United States, and France--and offers detailed descriptions of weekly food purchases; photographs of the families at home, at market, and in their communities; and a portrait of each family surrounded by a week's worth of groceries. Featuring photo-essays on international street food, meat markets, fast food, and cookery, this captivating chronicle offers a…
A former Catholic, raised in the restaurant business, becoming a Franciscan, and with a passionate love of art, they collectively integrated and came to define my life. I was sent to culinary school. Suffering from a chronic lung condition and obesity, I learned that an animal-based diet was the primary cause and became a vegan in October 1976, regaining my health. Vegan culinary art, as my life’s passion, led me to compete in the International Culinary Olympics five times in Germany, winning Seven medals, including gold, writing for magazines, authoring four books, and working with the United Nations to help humanity improve its health with a plant-based vegan diet.
Food in History is a pioneer work on the deceptively simple theme. Its purpose is to examine the forces which have shaped the nature of man’s diet throughout the course of thirty thousand years and to show, without special pleading, something of the way in which the pursuit of more and better food has helped to direct – sometimes decisively, more often subtly – the movement of history itself. To demonstrate, in effect, that in some senses, at least food is history.
This book literally walks the reader through the history of food, how we evolved from foraging to an agrarian community, and how supermarkets evolved from farmers markets. Weaving food into politics, religion, and economics Food in History is an expose on humanity's complex relationship with food and our reliance on both produce and meat as the basis of the human omnivore diet.
An enthralling world history of food from prehistoric times to the present. A favorite of gastronomes and history buffs alike, Food in History is packed with intriguing information, lore, and startling insights--like what cinnamon had to do with the discovery of America, and how food has influenced population growth and urban expansion.
I'm a fifth-generation Arizonan, a former staff writer for the Arizona Republic, and a lifelong student of the Grand Canyon State. One of my very favorite things to do is travel the backroads of this amazing state and talk with the astonishing people who live there. Along the way, I wrote eight nonfiction books, including Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award. My day job is at Chapman University, where I am an English professor.
“They came hungry,” begins the first chapter of this delightful look at the gastronomy of America’s desert quarter.
The whole dining table is here: huevos rancheros, tamales, chili, oranges, russet potatoes, rotgut whiskey, the chimichanga (which McNamee calls “a crispy torpedo of goodness”) and the Apache home-brewed beer called tiswin.
It’s one thing to enjoy Southwestern cooking. It’s another to understand its roots.
In this entertaining history, Gregory McNamee explores the many ethnic and cultural traditions that have contributed to the food of the Southwest. He traces the origins of the cuisine to the arrival of humans in the Americas, the work of the earliest farmers of Mesoamerica, and the most ancient trade networks joining peoples of the coast, plains, and mountains. From the ancient chile pepper and agave to the comparatively recent fare of sushi and Frito pie, this complex culinary journey involves many players over space and time. Born of scarcity, migration, and climate change, these foods are now fully at…
I’m an author, playwright, nonprofit strategist, and mother to two small children–the list goes on and on, and it's enough to work up an appetite. Since three of my favorite things in the world are 1) my kids, 2) stories, and 3) food, this reading roundup is near and dear to my heart. I wrote my picture book, Do Not Eat This Book!, because I believe food is a delicious entryway for exploring identity, sharing, caring, culture, and more, and the books in this list exemplify the sweet power of a good food-themed picture book.
At our house, we love books that allow us to visit new worlds. This book explores food from 13 different countries across the globe and will make you want to travel all the way around the world (or maybe just go to a local restaurant for now) to try all the delicious dishes.
From Sweden to Nigeria and Pakistan to Peru, it’s interesting and tantalizing to learn more about each place through what’s on their plates.
Dig in to this fun and informational book that explores foods from 13 countries around the world. Meet characters from countries including Sweden, Peru, Pakistan, Nigeria, and more as they enjoy breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Be inspired to try something new and learn about other cultures. Let's eat!
My twin passions in life have always been food and writing. While I chose poetry and creative writing as my primary fields of expertise, my ten-plus years of working in restaurants are just as important to who I am. I’m hungry for food writing that takes a more literary or creative approach. Cooking is a highly creative and meaningful act, and I love to see writing that aspires to do for the reader what the dedicated cook does for the eater: to nourish not only the body but the more metaphysical elements of our being, which is to say, our hearts, and maybe even our souls.
Reading this book was a bit of a revelation for me. The book is not only an intelligent assessment of the moral-ethical dilemma of eating meat, but it’s a brilliant piece of writing—nothing short of a work of art.
What sets Williams’s book apart from others on the subject is the quality and genre of the writing; rather than straight journalism/memoir, it’s an extended lyric essay, a work of creative nonfiction, which is something that’s sorely underrepresented in the wider world of food writing.
I loved every page of it, and remain haunted by the poetry of Williams’s unflinching vision of what it means to be an animal that eats other animals.
Based on years of investigative reporting, Wyatt Williams offers a powerful look at why we kill animals and why we eat meat. In order to understand why we eat meat, restaurant critic and journalist Wyatt Williams narrates his time spent investigating factory farms, learning to hunt game, working on a slaughterhouse kill floor, and partaking in Indigenous traditions of whale eating in Alaska, while charting the history of meat eating and vegetarianism.
Williams shows how mysteries springing up from everyday experiences can lead us into the big questions of life while examining the irreconcilable differences between humans and animals. Springer…
I have been researching and writing about wine, food, and travel for over 40 years (my first book, The Wine and Food of Europe, co-authored with my photographer wife Kim Millon, was published in 1982). I love to travel, I love to eat, and I love to drink wine. Most of all, I am interested in placing food and wine within a cultural and historical context. I have a weekly podcast, “Wine, Food, and Travel with Marc Millon,” which allows me to explore these topics by speaking directly to people. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I do.
I love travelling to Italy’s great cities: Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, Palermo, Bologna, Turin. One of the great pleasures is enjoying the local foods and wines. In this book, John Dickie demonstrates that Italy’s famed regional cuisines have origins not in the countryside but in the peculiar and particular workings of these great urban entities.
By exploring foods through links to cities, and cities through the foods that are unique to each, whether because of foreign influences, systems of agricultural tender, or through highlighting differences between working, merchant, and aristocratic classes, Dickie gave me greater insight and appreciation into place through the food that you or I will encounter on our plates, wherever in Italy we might happen to find ourselves.
'If only we could all write as brilliantly on Italy and its food as John Dickie does. He may well know Italy and Italians better than they know themselves' Stanley Tucci
The new edition of the much-loved classic, with a fresh chapter that brings the surprising and moreish tale of the Italian way of eating right up to the present.
Delizia! takes the reader on a revelatory historical journey through the flavours of the cities that shaped the Italian love for good eating. From the bustle of Medieval Milan, to the bombast of Fascist Rome; from the pleasure gardens of…
