The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread [Hardcover]

Ms. Maria Balinska (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2008

If smoked salmon and cream cheese bring only one thing to mind, you can count yourself among the world’s millions of bagel mavens. But few people are aware of the bagel’s provenance, let alone its adventuresome history. This charming book tells the remarkable story of the bagel’s journey from the tables of seventeenth-century Poland to the freezers of middle America today, a story of often surprising connections between a cheap market-day snack and centuries of Polish, Jewish, and American history.

 

Research in international archives and numerous personal interviews uncover the bagel’s links with the defeat of the Turks by Polish King Jan Sobieski in 1683, the Yiddish cultural revival of the late nineteenth century, and Jewish migration across the Atlantic to America. There the story moves from the bakeries of New York’s Lower East Side to the Bagel Bakers’ Local 388 Union of the 1960s, and the attentions of the mob. For all its modest size, the bagel has managed to bridge cultural gaps, rescue kings from obscurity, charge the emotions, and challenge received wisdom. Maria Balinska weaves together a rich, quirky, and evocative history of East European Jewry and the unassuming ring-shaped roll the world has taken to its heart.

 

(20081112)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From the Italian ciambella in a 17th-century portrait of a young prince to the 1959 album Bagels and Bongos by pianist Irving Fields, journalist and BBC radio editor Balinska traces the cultural identity of a New York City icon from its humble beginnings in Poland to the freezer section of American supermarkets. Balinska's own interest in the bagel began with a year spent in Warsaw, Poland, as a graduate student, where she learned that her own family history was relevant to that of the bagel. She then unearths a plethora of little-known facts about this breakfast staple, recounting its role in children's nursery rhymes, Poland's economic crisis of 1929, even its place in a McCall's magazine spread in 1963 next to Shirley Temple where the magazine encouraged its readers to Join the stars below in this salute to Manhattan's most popular breakfast—bagels and lox. While the book may be too dry for the run-of-the- mill bagel lover, academics and dedicated foodies will appreciate Balinska's considerable research as well as her forays into the late 19th-century Jewish immigrant experience and American pop culture. Photos. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

The bagel may have grown out of its New York insularity to become an American icon, but its origins are not what many people have come to believe. Historian Balinska traces the bagel’s history and discovers antecedents in southern Italy and in Muslim northwest China. Despite the oft-repeated legend, the bagel did not originate as a tribute to Polish king Jan Sobieski after the Battle of Vienna in 1683, for documents citing the ring-shaped bread substantially antedate that event. In the nineteenth century, both Jewish and Gentile bakers sold bagels in local eastern European markets. Jewish immigrants brought the bagel to New York and made it popular. With a keen ear for telling the anecdote, Balinska reports how the bagel entered urban history, how it figured in labor disputes, and how America’s bagel capital may have shifted to Mattoon, Illinois, whose bakery daily turns out three million bagels. --Mark Knoblauch

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1 edition (November 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300112297
• ISBN-13: 978-0300112290
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,043,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History-Lite., November 27, 2008

By 

Gerard J. St John (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread (Hardcover)

This short book (195 pages) does not purport to be a definitive history of the bagel. As the author notes, the bagel is a modest bread made of commonly available ingredients, flour, water and eggs. It should not be surprising that many people throughout history have mixed these ingredients into a dough that is boiled and then baked in a circular shape with a hole in the middle. Similar foodstuffs have been found in many places, including China and Italy. This book focuses on the bagels of the Jewish bakers in Poland and in the United States. It is history-lite.

Actually, it is "histories-lite." It presents a series of summary histories. It tells the story of Jan Sobieski's military victory, lifting the siege of Vienna in 1683. It tells the story of the hard-working bakers and the impoverished peddlers of bagels in the cities of Poland for more than two centuries. It tells the story of the Jewish immigrant bakers in the lower east side of New York City. It tells the role of the Polish Jews in the labor movement in the first half of the 1900s, a movement that pitted capitalism against socialism. And it tells how the Lender brothers guided their bagel baking company into a multi-million dollar business.

Together, these summary histories provide clear snapshots of the lives of people who are not usually mentioned in traditional history books. The book is well written and well worth reading.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Bagel's Eye View of Cultural Change With Humor and Some Memorable Lines, December 16, 2008

By 

David Crumm "Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine" (Canton, Michigan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread (Hardcover)

Let me respectfully add a word of context to the "History-Lite" review on this page. Maria Balinska, a veteran journalist with the BBC, is the first to admit that her bagel book is not an exhaustive history of all elements related to the bagel. There's an important scholarly tradition now of pursuing such threads through the centuries. If you're looking for such a study, one of the classics in the field is Fernand Braudel's still awesome "Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. I: The Structure of Everyday Life (Civilization and Capitalism : 15th-18th Century)." (And, yes, Braudel does write a lot about bread.)

That's not the point of "The Bagel." This slim and fascinating volume is aimed at reminding readers that -- as surprising as it may seem to many men and women -- something as simple as a bagel can become a colorful window into the evolving nature of Jewish culture especially in Europe and North America.

And more than that, what's so great about exploring threads of religious and ethnic identity like this? Well, the story of bagels in America also is a part of American Baby Boomer experience, whatever your faith may be. Like a lot of other Baby Boomers, I vividly recall discovering the exotic delight of bagels in the early 1970s and watching this distinctive treat go mainstream throughout my own adult life. Similarly, Jewish Americans have moved more prominently into the American mainstream during those decades.

The author is well aware of the scholarly giants in the field of cultural history and culinary evolution. She readily points out that she's not trying to outdo the Braudels in this field. Rather, her book is a talented journalist's tribute to the enlightenment we all can find in exploring the stuff of everyday life that we all too often take for granted.

Plus, as a lifelong journalist myself, I can tell you that I finished the book with a dozen corners of pages folded over, marking anecdotes and great lines that I plan to share with others. This book is that fun.

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written, November 15, 2010

By 

New Leaf (India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread (Paperback)

It's a very slim book with lots of details and information. Pity the book did not come with samples of each of the breads mentioned in it!!! I read it in about 2 sittings and would have loved to eat a bagel at the end of the book.

Good read and I highly recommend it.