Customer Reviews

The Food Chronology: A Food Lover's Compendium of Events and Anecdotes, from Prehistory to the Present

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Well, my daughter borrowed it from the school library and when I first saw it I was enthralled and soon started browsing and could not stop reading, but then I fell onto some rather mistaken informations which, I am afraid, put the seed of mistrust in me. If I find such mistakes about subjects that I know well about, how many other people will also find other mistakes in this book about the subjects that they know well ? For instance, page 62, year 1274, we find: THe Japanese continue their relatively peaceful lives, shopping at the markets of Edo, Kyoto and Nara for (....)aubergines (.....) strawberries.(...).In those days Edo was a tiny village and Kyoto was certainly not called Kyoto either, as it was the capital, it was still called Heian-kyo or Miyako. Also, aubergines belong to the capsicum family and together with tomatoes, peppers, chilis, potatoes, they came from America, and certainly did not exist in Japan in those days. As for strawberries, are not they also one of the delicacies that we owe to America, as it appears on page 117 of the same book ? (1620) Regarding the Japanese peaceful lives too, this sounds a bit odd because this period is still troubled by feudal wars and plots and revenges, with lots of murders, castles burning, fields ravaged and people exiled... Hum! So much for peace! From a reader in Japan.

This book is a great read, and very entertaining. It wouldn't be used in any college history course, but probably was not intended for that. I was also rather disappointed that the 20th century took up so much of the book; plus inclusion of trendy-at-the-time-the-book-was-written restaurants in a supposed history of food seemed to be a bit gratuitous. Finally, though this may be something to be expected, ,the book (especially for later periods) is very Amero-centric, with most of the rest of the attention going to Europe, and just a snippet here or there of other food cultures.

I agree with other reviewers that Trager's book contains numerous errors. Nevertheless, there's nothing I've read quite like it for breadth of coverage of food history. The book is a resource for food writers like me, or anyone who wants a good source of ideas about food. I can check my facts elsewhere. I particularly enjoy Trager's treatment of food processing and industrial food history, as well as his analysis of food and nutrition fads over the past few centuries. His coverage of food-related and deficiency illnesses is also deep, and has spurred me to further reading. If you read The Food Chronology from cover to cover, as I did over a period of several months, you cannot help but be stimulated and enriched.

Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com

Any serious student of food and food history
will find a lot of errors and inadequacies in
this book. Sometimes the material is just plain
wrong. More often, the brief comments are just
over-simplified: the section on Italy's D.O.C.
laws is an example.Most of the problems are
questions of emphasis: there are 25 entries for
'pasta' and none for 'soba'. None of the entries
about wine mention the development of bottling,
which is surely one of the most important innova
tions. As other reviewers have observed, there
is a disproportionate emphasis on America and
Europe and the curious inclusion of many short-
lived restaurants.

So with all these cavils, what's the point of
this book and why does it rate three stars?
This books great virtue is as a corrective
companion to all those histories that ignore
food. If you believe that people follow their
food and that nutrition and gastronomy often
lie beneath the big topics in history, this is
your book. What was going on in the world of
food in 1776? 1812? How did salt cod and lime
juice change the course of the European
exploration of the rest of the world?

This is history in a blink-without much
sense of context and no report of the ideas
about food that lurked behind the events.
But it is a valuable dose of perspective and
an excellent starting point. It is also, for
those times and places where a quick browsing
read is desireable, irreplaceable.

My copy sits on a shelf near the rocker in
my kitchen. Another chef of my acquaintance
keeps his in the bathroom. As with so many
things, this book is a pleasure if you know
where it belongs.


Lynn Hoffman, author of The New Short Course in Wine
and the forthcoming novel bang-BANG from kunati press.

The reviewer from Japan was right in noting mistakes. This book is riddled with them, especially typos, skewed facts and sometimes real gaffes. (But begging your indulgence, fellow reviwer, eggplants are not from the Americas.)

Utterly comprehensive, fantasically informative and an utter delight. If you like food, you'll love this! How anyone else gave it less than five stars I can't imagine

This exhaustive book of the history of food is extremely intresting and well written. A must have for anyone intrested in food!