Fans pick 100 books like Fresh

In the 1990s a small midwestern American town approved the construction of a massive pork complex, where almost 7 million hogs are birthed, raised, and killed every year. In Porkopolis Alex Blanchette explores how this rural community has been reorganized around the life and death cycles of corporate pigs. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork, Blanchette immerses readers into the workplaces that underlie modern meat, from slaughterhouses and corporate offices to artificial insemination barns and bone-rendering facilities. He outlines the deep human-hog relationships and intimacies that emerge through intensified industrialization, showing how even the most mundane human action,… show more.

The toxicity of pesticides to the environment and humans is often framed as an unfortunate effect of their benefits to agricultural production. In Economic Poisoning, Adam M. Romero upends this narrative and provides a fascinating new history of pesticides in American industrial agriculture prior to World War II. Through impeccable archival research, Romero reveals the ways in which late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American agriculture, especially in California, functioned less as a market for novel pest-killing chemical products and more as a sink for the accumulating toxic wastes of mining, oil production, and chemical manufacturing. Connecting farming ecosystems to technology… show more.

The story of how white bread became white trash, this social history shows how our relationship with the love-it-or-hate-it food staple reflects our country’s changing values

In the early twentieth century, the factory-baked loaf heralded a bright new future, a world away from the hot, dusty, “dirty” bakeries run by immigrants. Fortified with vitamins, this bread was considered the original “superfood” and even marketed as patriotic—while food reformers painted white bread as a symbol of all that was wrong with America.

So how did this icon of American progress become “white trash”? In this lively history of bakers, dietary crusaders,… show more.

This book provides an interpretation of the industrialization of agriculture, and proposes a new analytical framework for interpreting this transformation and the development of the contemporary food system. This analytical framework provides a critique of agricultural modernisation theories, while the authors introduce new concepts of "appropriationism" and "substitutionism" to propose an interpretation which overcomes the invitations of traditional approaches. The authors use this new theoretical framework to reconstruct the evolution of agricultural industrialization since the mid-19th century and to reinterpret the dynamics of social structures, the state and technology in shaping the modern food system.

Age range 3+

Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast worry that they're going stale, so they visit Professor Biscotti's lab to try a new despoiling procedure. But instead of beautifying them, Professor Biscotti's faulty gadget transforms them into toddlers!

Scared in the presence of the now gargantuan-looking Baron von Waffle, the mini breakfast foods take off on an adventure in the fridge, visiting everywhere from the Bran Canyon to Limes Square.

Will Baron von Waffle and Professor Biscotti figure out a way to turn them back into a grown Lady and Sir, or will they stay short & sweet forever?

We're told that if we care about our health-or our planet-eliminating red meat from our diets is crucial. That beef is bad for us and cattle farming is horrible for the environment. But science says otherwise.

Beef is framed as the most environmentally destructive and least healthy of meats. We're often told that the only solution is to reduce or quit red meat entirely. But despite what anti-meat groups, vegan celebrities, and some health experts say, plant-based agriculture is far from a perfect solution.

In Sacred Cow, registered dietitian Diana Rodgers and former research biochemist and New York Times bestselling… show more.

Cookbooks offer a unique and valuable way to examine American life. Their lessons, however, are not always obvious. Direct references to the American Civil War were rare in cookbooks, even in those published right in the middle of it. In part, this is a reminder that lives went on and that dinner still appeared on most tables most nights, no matter how much the world was changing outside. But people accustomed to thinking of cookbooks as a source for recipes, and not much else, can be surprised by how much information they can reveal about the daily lives and ways… show more.

When young adventurer Laios and his company are attacked and soundly thrashed by a dragon deep in a dungeon, the party loses all its money and provisions. They're eager to get right back to it, but there's just one problem: if they set out with no food or coin to speak of, they're sure to eat it on the way! But Laios comes up with a brilliant idea: 'Let's eat the monsters!' Slimes, basilisks, mimics, and even dragons...none are safe from the appetites of these dungeon-crawling gourmands!

Winner of the Andre Simon Food Book Award 2020

"Caroline Eden is an extraordinarily creative and gifted writer. Red Sands captures the sights, tastes and feel of Central Asia so well that when reading this book I was sometimes convinced I was there in person. A wonderful book from start to finish." Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads\

"Caroline Eden, whose book Black Sea was showered with awards, is on the road again, this time travelling through the heart of Asia. It's not your usual cookbook, it's more a travel book with recipes, the recipes acting as postcards which… show more.