Before Julia Child’s warbling voice and towering figure burst into America’s homes, a gourmet food movement was already sweeping the nation. Setting the Table for Julia Child considers how the tastes and techniques cultivated at dining clubs and in the pages of Gourmet magazine helped prepare many affluent Americans for Child’s lessons in French cooking. David Strauss argues that Americans’ appetite for haute cuisine had been growing ever since the repeal of Prohibition. Dazzled by visions of the good life presented in luxury lifestyle magazines and by the practices of the upper class, who adopted European taste and fashion, upper-middle-class Americans increasingly populated the gourmet movement. In the process, they came to appreciate the cuisine created by France's greatest chef, Auguste Escoffier. Strauss’s impressive archival research illuminates themes—gender, class, consumerism, and national identity—that influenced the course of gourmet dining in America. He also points out how the work of painters and fine printers—reproduced here—called attention to the aesthetic of dining, a vision that heightened one’s anticipation of a gratifying experience. In the midst of this burgeoning gourmet food movement Child found her niche. The movement may have introduced affluent Americans to the pleasure of French cuisine years before Julia Child, but it was Julia’s lessons that expanded the audience for gourmet dining and turned lovers of French cuisine into cooks.

Many of us have dog-eared copies of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in our kitchens or fondly remember watching episodes of The French Chef, but what was behind the enormous appeal of this ungainly, unlikely woman, who became a superstar in midlife and changed our approach to food and cooking forever? In the spirit of The Gospel According to Coco Chanel and How Georgia Became O'Keeffe, Julia Child Rules dissects the life of the sunny, unpretentious chef, author, cooking show star, and bon vivant, with an eye towards learning how we, too, can savor life. With her characteristic wit and flair, Karen Karbo takes us for a spin through Julia's life: from her idyllic childhood in California to her confusing young adulthood in New York; her years working for the OSS in Sri Lanka; her world class love affairs with Paris and Paul Child; and her decades as America's beloved French chef. Karbo weaves in her own personal experiences and stops for important life lessons along the way: how to live by your whims, make the world your oyster, live happily married, work hard, and enjoy a life of full immersion. It celebrates Julia's indomitable spirit and irrepressible joy, giving readers a taste of what it means to master the art of living.

Nora Ephron was one of the most popular, accomplished, and beloved writers in American journalism and film. Nora Ephron: A Biography is the first comprehensive portrait of the Manhattan-born girl who forged a path of her own, earning accolades and adoration from critics and fans alike. Author Kristin Marguerite Doidge explores the tremendous successes and disappointing failures Ephron sustained in her career as a popular essayist turned screenwriter turned film director. She redefined the modern rom-com genre with bestselling books such as Heartburn and hit movies including When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and Julie & Julia. Doidge also examines the private life Ephron tried to keep in balance with her insatiable ambition. Based on rare archival research and numerous interviews with some of Ephron's closest friends, collaborators, and award-winning colleagues including actors Tom Hanks and Caroline Aaron, comedian Martin Short, composer George Fenton, and lifelong friends from Wellesley to New York to Hollywood—as well as interviews Ephron herself gave throughout her career—award-winning journalist and cultural critic Doidge has written a captivating story of the life of a creative writer whose passion for the perfect one-liner and ferocious drive to succeed revolutionized journalism, comedy, and film. The first in-depth biography to explore the complex themes that ran through Ephron's work and to examine why so many of them still grab our attention today.

This three-volume encyclopedia on the history of American food and beverages serves as an ideal companion resource for social studies and American history courses, covering topics ranging from early American Indian foods to mandatory nutrition information at fast food restaurants. The expression "you are what you eat" certainly applies to Americans, not just in terms of our physical health, but also in the myriad ways that our taste preferences, eating habits, and food culture are intrinsically tied to our society and history. This standout reference work comprises two volumes containing more than 600 alphabetically arranged historical entries on American foods and beverages, as well as dozens of historical recipes for traditional American foods; and a third volume of more than 120 primary source documents. Never before has there been a reference work that coalesces this diverse range of information into a single set. The entries in this set provide information that will transform any American history research project into an engaging learning experience. Examples include explanations of how tuna fish became a staple food product for Americans, how the canning industry emerged from the Civil War, the difference between Americans and people of other countries in terms of what percentage of their income is spent on food and beverages, and how taxation on beverages like tea, rum, and whisky set off important political rebellions in U.S. history.

This Companion rethinks food in literature from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to contemporary food blogs, and recovers cookbooks as literary texts.

Dana Polan considers what made Julia Childs TV show, The French Chef, so popular during its original broadcast and such enduring influences on American cooking, American television, and American culture since then.

"A Taste of Power is an investigation of the crucial role culinary texts and practices played in the making of cultural identities and social hierarchies since the founding of the United States. Nutritional advice and representations of food and eating, including cookbooks, literature, magazines, newspapers, still life paintings, television shows, films, and the internet, have helped throughout American history to circulate normative claims about citizenship, gender performance, sexuality, class privilege, race, and ethnicity, while promising an increase in cultural capital and social mobility to those who comply with the prescribed norms. The study examines culinary writing and practices as forces for the production of social order and, at the same time, as points of cultural resistance against hegemonic norms, especially in shaping dominant ideas of nationalism, gender, and sexuality, suggesting that eating right is a gateway to becoming an American, a good citizen, an ideal man, or a perfect mother. Cookbooks, as a low-prestige literary form, became the largely unheralded vehicles for women to participate in nation-building before they had access to the vote or public office, for middle-class authors to assert their class privileges, for men to claim superiority over women even in the kitchen, and for Lesbian authors to reinscribe themselves into the heteronormative economy of culinary culture. The book engages in close reading of a wide variety of sources and genres to uncover the intersections of food, politics, and privilege in American culture."--Provided by publisher.

Finalist for the IACP Cookbook Award A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A Smithsonian Best Food Book of the Year Longlisted for the Art of Eating Prize Featuring a new chapter on ten restaurants changing America today, a “fascinating . . . sweep through centuries of food culture” (Washington Post). Combining an historian’s rigor with a food enthusiast’s palate, Paul Freedman’s seminal and highly entertaining Ten Restaurants That Changed America reveals how the history of our restaurants reflects nothing less than the history of America itself. Whether charting the rise of our love affair with Chinese food through San Francisco’s fabled Mandarin; evoking the poignant nostalgia of Howard Johnson’s, the beloved roadside chain that foreshadowed the pandemic of McDonald’s; or chronicling the convivial lunchtime crowd at Schrafft’s, the first dining establishment to cater to women’s tastes, Freedman uses each restaurant to reveal a wider story of race and class, immigration and assimilation. “As much about the contradictions and contrasts in this country as it is about its places to eat” (The New Yorker), Ten Restaurants That Changed America is a “must-read” (Eater) that proves “essential for anyone who cares about where they go to dinner” (Wall Street Journal Magazine).

Julia Child's Kitchen is a gorgeous dive into the beloved cookbook author and television star’s favorite place in the world—her home kitchen—and how this space has influenced the ways we cook today. Foreword by Jacques Pépin This book, a beautifully designed tribute to Julia Child's legacy, is a must‑have for every serious home cook and Julia Child fan. Including interviews with famous chefs who knew Julia well, commentary on her favorite kitchen gadgets, and a stunning array of photos, Julia Child’s Kitchen illuminates the stories behind the room’s design, use, and significance, revealing how Julia Child continues to impact food and cooking today. Julia Child's 20’ x 14’ kitchen was a serious workspace and recipe‑testing lab that exuded a sense of mid‑century homey comfort. It has been on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., for most of the past twenty years, and museum goers have made it a top destination. Between lively narrative, compelling photography, and detailed commentary on Julia's favorite kitchen gadgets, Julia Child's Kitchen illuminates the stories behind the room's design, use, significance, and legacy, showing how deeply Julia Child continues to influence food today. The kitchen contains more than one thousand parts and pieces—tools, appliances, utensils, furniture, artwork, knick‑knacks, books, and bits of whimsy—all reflecting Julia’s status as an accomplished chef, gastronome, delightful cooking teacher, television trailblazer, women’s advocate, mentor, and generous, jovial friend. Authored by Paula J. Johnson, one of the original collectors and keepers of Julia Child’s home kitchen for the past twenty‑one years at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Includes Color Photographs

Today, more than ever, talking about food improves the eating of it. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson argues that conversation can even trump consumption. Where many works look at the production, preparation, and consumption of food, Word of Mouth captures the language that explains culinary practices. Explanation is more than an elaboration here: how we talk about food says a great deal about the world around us and our place in it. What does it mean, Ferguson asks, to cook and consume in a globalized culinary world subject to vertiginous change? Answers to this question demand a mastery of food talk in all its forms and applications. To prove its case, Word of Mouth draws on a broad range of cultural documents from interviews, cookbooks, and novels to comic strips, essays, and films. Although the United States supplies the primary focus of Ferguson's explorations, the French connection remains vital. American food culture comes of age in dialogue with French cuisine even as it strikes out on its own. In the twenty-first century, culinary modernity sets haute food against haute cuisine, creativity against convention, and the individual dish over the communal meal. Ferguson finds a new level of sophistication in what we thought that we already knew: the real pleasure in eating comes through knowing how to talk about it.