The Fate of Rome is the first book to examine the catastrophic role that climate change and infectious diseases played in the collapse of Rome's power--a story of nature's triumph over human ambition.Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes readers from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted. Harper describes how the Romans were resilient in the face of enormous environmental stress, until the besieged empire could no longer withstand the combined challenges of a "little ice age" and recurrent outbreaks of bubonic plague.A poignant reflection on humanity's intimate relationship with the environment, The Fate of Rome provides a sweeping account of how one of history's greatest civilizations encountered, endured, yet ultimately succumbed to the cumulative burden of nature's violence. The example of Rome is a timely reminder that climate change and germ evolution have shaped the world we inhabit--in ways that are surprising and profound.

    Ball takes readers on a journey into the depths of epic fantasy's obsession with rabbit stew and teaches them how to catch the blasted creatures, how to move armies across enemy territories without anyone starving to death, and what a medieval pantry should look like when your heroine is seducing the hero. Learn how long to cook a salted cow tongue, how best to serve salt fish, what a "brewis" is (hint: it isn't beer), how an airship captain would make breakfast, how to preserve just about anything, and why those dairy maids all have ample hips. What Kings Ate will give writers of historical and fantastical genres the tools to create new conflicts in their stories, as well as add authenticity to their worlds, all the while giving food history lovers a taste of the past with original recipes and historical notes.

    It is important that we be in charge again of our cooking, working with fresh, unadulterated ingredients. Enclosed you will find many simple-to-make, good-tasting, inexpensive dishes from the past that taste better than ever today. I urge you to try them. · Good soups—satisfying one-dish meals that can be made ahead· Dishes that can be made with what’s on hand—First-Prize Onion Casserole, Shepherd’s Pie, Salmon or Tuna Loaf· Vegetables baked and ready for the table· Real salads, substantial enough for lunch or supper, with snappy dressings· Breads and cookies, puddings and cakes that you loved as a childPS: There is nothing like the satisfaction of sharing with others something you have cooked yourself

    As the home of A. J. Liebling, Joseph Wechsberg, and M.F.K. Fisher, who practically invented American food writing, the magazine established a tradition that is carried forward today by irrepressible literary gastronomes, including Calvin Trillin, Bill Buford, Adam Gopnik, Jane Kramer, and Anthony Bourdain. Now, in this indispensable collection, "The New Yorker "dishes up a feast of delicious writing on food and drink, seasoned with a generous dash of cartoons. Whether you re in the mood for snacking on humor pieces and cartoons or for savoring classic profiles of great chefs and great eaters, these offerings, from every age of The New Yorker s fabled eighty-year history, are sure to satisfy every taste. There are memoirs, short stories, tell-alls, and poems ranging in tone from sweet to sour and in subject from soup to nuts. M.F.K. Fisher pays homage to cookery witches, those mysterious cooks who possess an uncanny power over food, while John McPhee valiantly trails an inveterate forager and is rewarded with stewed persimmons and white-pine-needle tea. There is Roald Dahl s famous story Taste, in which a wine snob s palate comes in for some unwelcome scrutiny, and Julian Barnes s ingenious tale of a lifelong gourmand who goes on a very peculiar diet for still more peculiar reasons. Adam Gopnik asks if French cuisine is done for, and Calvin Trillin investigates whether people can actually taste the difference between red wine and white. We journey with Susan Orlean as she distills the essence of Cuba in the story of a single restaurant, and with Judith Thurman as she investigates the arcane practices of Japan s tofu masters. Closer to home, Joseph Mitchell celebrates the old New York tradition of the beefsteak dinner, and Mark Singer shadows the city s foremost fisherman-chef. Dining out: All you can hold for five bucks / Joseph Mitchell --The finest butter and lots of time / Joseph Wechsberg --A good appetite / A.J. Liebling --The afterglow / A.J. Liebling --Is there a crisis in French cooking? / Adam Gopnik --Don't eat before reading this / Anthony Bourdain --A really big lunch / Jim Harrison --Eating in: The secret ingredient / M.F.K. Fisher --The trouble with tripe / M.F.K. Fisher --Nor censure nor disdain / M.F.K. Fisher --Good cooking: / Calvin Tomkins --Look back in hunger / Anthony Lane --The reporter's kitchen / Jane Kramer --Fishing and foraging: A mess of clams / Joseph Mitchell --A forager / John McPhee --The fruit detective / John Seabrook --Gone fishing / Mark Singer --On the bay / Bill Buford --Local delicacies: An attempt to compile a short history of The buffalo chicken wing / Calvin Trillin --The homesick restaurant / Susan Orlean --The magic bagel / Calvin Trillin --A rat in my soup / Peter Hessler --Raw faith / Burkhard Bilger --Night kitchens / Judith Thurman --The pour: Dry martini / Roger Angell --The red and the white / Calvin Trillin --The russian god / Victor Erofeyev --The ketchup conundrum / Malcolm Gladwell --Tastes funny: But the one on the right / Dorothy Parker --Curl up and diet / Ogden Nash --Quick, hammacher, my stomacher! / Ogden Nash --Nesselrode to jeopardy / S.J. Perelman --Eat, drink, and be merry / Peter De Vries --Notes from the overfed / Woody Allen --Two menus / Steve Martin --The zagat history of my last relationship 409(3) / Noah Baumbach --Your table is ready / John Kenney --Small plates: Bock / William Shawn --Diat / Geoffrey T. Hellman --4 a.m. / James Stevenson --Slave / Alex Prud'Homme --Under the hood / Mark Singer --Protein source / Mark Singer --A sandwich / Nora Ephron --Sea urchin / Chang-Rae Lee --As the french do / Janet MalColm --Blocking and chowing / Ben McGrath --When edibles attack / Rebecca Mead --Killing dinner / Gabrielle Hamilton --Fiction: Taste / Roald Dahl --Two roast beefs / V.S. Pritchett --The sorrows of gin / John Cheever --The jaguar sun / Italo Calvino --There should be a name for it / Matthew Klam --Sputnik / Don DeLillo --Enough / Alice McDermott --The butcher's wife / Louise Erdrich --Bark / Julian Barnes

    Collected here are authentic and practical recipes for such eighteenth- and early-nineteenth- century dishes as Burgoo, Drowned Baby, Sea-Pie, Solomongundy, Jam Roly-Poly, Toasted Cheese, Sucking Pig, Treacle-Dowdy, and, of course, Spotted Dog. Also included are historical notes on the origins of the dishes as well as sections on the preparing of roasts, puddings, and raised pies."[A] splendid cookbook...graced with erudite bits of naval and gastronomical history....Deftly researched and written in prose nearly as funny as O'Brian's own."—Publishers Weekly "A thoroughly readable cookbook, as well as a useful appendix to a great series of novels and a newly opened window into a time now nearly 200 years gone."—San Jose Mercury News

    But times have changed, and knowledge about the foods we eat and their nutritional value has increased. So, after many inquiries and requests, the author has revised many of her recipes to be lighter and healthier. Illustrated.

    If you've ever fantasized about feasting on Frank Sinatra's Barbecued Lamb, lunching on Lucille Ball's "Chinese-y Thing," diving ever-so-neatly into Joan Crawford's Poached Salmon, or wrapping your lips around Rock Hudson's cannoli – and really, who hasn't? – hold on to your oven mitts!     In The Dead Celebrity Cookbook: A Resurrection of Recipes by 150 Stars of Stage and Screen, Frank DeCaro—the flamboyantly funny Sirius XM radio personality best known for his six-and-a-half-year stint as the movie critic on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart—collects hundreds of recipes passed on from legendary stars of stage and screen, proving that before there were celebrity chefs, there were celebrities who fancied themselves chefs.   Their all-but-forgotten recipes—rescued from out-of-print cookbooks, musty biographies, vintage magazines, and dusty pamphlets—suggest a style of home entertaining ripe for reexamination if not revival, while reminding intrepid gourmands that, for better or worse, Hollywood doesn't make celebrities (or cooks) like it used to. Starring Elizabeth Taylor's Chicken with Avocado and MushroomsFarrah Fawcett's Sausage and PeppersLiberace's Sticky Buns Bette Davis's Red Flannel Hash Bea Arthur's Good Morning Mushroom Tomato Toast Dudley Moore's Crème BrûléeGypsy Rose Lee's Portuguese Fish ChowderJohn Ritter's Famous Fudge Andy Warhol's Ghoulish Goulash Vincent Price's Pepper SteakJohnny Cash's Old Iron Pot Family-Style Chili Vivian Vance's Chicken Kiev Sebastian Cabot's Avocado Surprise Lawrence Welk's Vegetable Croquettes Ann Miller's Cheese SouffléJerry Orbach's TrifleTotie Fields's Fruit MellowIrene Ryan's Tipsy Basingstoke Klaus Nomi's Key Lime TartRichard Deacon's Bitter and BoozeSonny Bono's Spaghetti with Fresh Tomato Sauce And many others from breakfast to dessert.

    Nothing else approaches its vast scale: a land wall running 73 miles from east to west and a sea wall stretching at least 26 miles down the Cumbrian coast. Many of its forts are as large as Britain's most formidable medieval castles, and the wide ditch dug to the south of the Wall, the vallum, is larger than any surviving prehistoric earthwork. Built in a ten-year period by more than 30,000 soldiers and labourers at the behest of an extraordinary emperor, the Wall consisted of more than 24 million stones, giving it a mass greater than all the Egyptian pyramids put together. At least a million people visit Hadrian's Wall each year and it has been designated a World Heritage Site. In this new book, based on literary and historical sources as well as the latest archaeological research, Alistair Moffat considers who built the Wall, how it was built, why it was built, and how it affected the native peoples who lived in its mighty shadow. The result is a unique and fascinating insight into one of the Wonders of the Ancient World.

     Tea is second only to water as the most-consumed beverage in the world. When recent studies revealed green tea's health benefits, North American consumption skyrocketed. Tea is a comprehensive guide to non-herbal tea, the plant Camellia sinensis. Concise and authoritative text and an abundance of color photographs take the reader on an escorted tour of the world's tea-growing countries: China, Japan, Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Vietnam and East Africa. Like a fine wine, it is the "terroir" -- a region's soil and climate -- that imparts unique characteristics to a tea.The book covers black, green, white, yellow, oolong, pu'er, perfumed, aromatic and smoked teas. Topics include:An overview of the history of teaTea varietiesThe worldwide export of teaHow tea is processedSignature tea cultivarsThe art of making, serving and tasting tea, including tea ceremoniesTea in cooking, with 15 recipes from gourmet chefsA directory of teas. A set of detailed charts, tables and graphs shows the caffeine, antioxidant and other biochemical properties of 35 teas.Tea aficionados go on organized tours of tea-growing regions, enroll in tasting seminars and earn professional certificates. For them and for the interested reader who enjoys the occasional cup, Tea is a beautifully presented homage to the world's most beloved hot beverage.

    In this well-researched book, Ian Kelly deftly recounts the exploits of this remarkable man." —JACQUES PÉPINAunique feast of biography and Regency cookbook, Cooking for Kings takes readers on a chef's tour of the palaces of Europe in the ultimate age of culinary indulgence.Drawing on the legendary cook's rich memoirs, Ian Kelly traces Antonin Carême's meteoric rise from Paris orphan to international celebrity and provides a dramatic below-stairs perspective on one of the most momentous, and sensuous, periods in European history—First Empire Paris, Georgian England, and the Russia of War and Peace.Carême had an unfailing ability to cook for the right people in the right place at the right time. He knew the favorite dishes of King George IV, the Rothschilds and the Romanovs; he knew Napoleon's fast-food requirements, and why Empress Josephine suffered halitosis.Carême's recipes still grace the tables of restaurants the world over. Now classics of French cuisine, created for, and named after, the kings and queens for whom he worked, they are featured throughout this captivating biography. In the phrase first coined by Carême, "You can try them yourself."

    48 pages ofillustrations, 16 in color. Maps.

    What’s the origin of kimchi in Korea? Why do we associate Argentina with steak? Why do people in Marseille eat bouillabaisse? What spices make a dish taste North African versus North Indian? What is the story behind the curries of India? And how do you know whether to drink a wine from Bourdeaux or one from Burgundy?Bubbling over with anecdotes, trivia, and lore—from the role of a priest in the genesis of Camembert to the Mayan origins of the word chocolate—The World on a Plate serves up a mélange of recipes, history, and culinary wisdom to be savored by food lovers and armchair travelers alike.

    A classic cookbook filled with all kinds of advice for the new wife or home maker as well as classic American recipes from yesteryear.

    It requires nurturing and care. In this twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the international best-seller that started a generation of Americans baking, Ed Brown shows how to make—and enjoy—breads, pastries, muffins, and desserts for today's sophisticated palates. And in a new afterword, he reflects on the widespread influence of the book and offers five new recipes.This is 2010. I have just purchased a new copy of this book, which I first owned back in 1970 or 1971. I love them and use them until they fall apart. I believe they are a GREAT introduction to breakmaking for a new baker, and an excellent wedding gift.

    Food rationing was introduced in January 1940 after food shipments were attacked by German U-boat 'Wolf Packs'. The first food items to be rationed were butter, sugar, bacon and ham, with restrictions also placed on meat, fish, jam, biscuits, cheese, eggs and milk. The leaflets reproduced in Eating for Victory were distributed by the Ministry of Food and advised the general public on how to cope with these shortages. Typical contents included: recipes for steamed and boiled puddings; tips on how to use and prepare green vegetables; hints about how to reconstitute dried eggs and use; them as though they were fresh. Eating for Victory is a great gift book offering a nostalgic look back at one of the hardest and yet perhaps healthiest times in history, but is also a relevant guide on healthy eating for today.