The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal [Hardcover]

Mark Kurlansky (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 14, 2009

A remarkable portrait of American food before World War II, presented by the New York Times-bestselling author of Cod and Salt.

Award-winning New York Times-bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America: Before the national highway system brought the country closer together; before chain restaurants imposed uniformity and low quality; and before the Frigidaire meant frozen food in mass quantities, the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional. It helped form the distinct character, attitudes, and customs of those who ate it.

In the 1930s, with the country gripped by the Great Depression and millions of Americans struggling to get by, FDR created the Federal Writers' Project under the New Deal as a make-work program for artists and authors. A number of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Nelson Algren, were dispatched all across America to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people. The project, called "America Eats," was abandoned in the early 1940s because of the World War and never completed.

The Food of a Younger Land unearths this forgotten literary and historical treasure and brings it to exuberant life. Mark Kurlansky's brilliant book captures these remarkable stories, and combined with authentic recipes, anecdotes, photos, and his own musings and analysis, evokes a bygone era when Americans had never heard of fast food and the grocery superstore was a thing of the future. Kurlansky serves as a guide to this hearty and poignant look at the country's roots.

From New York automats to Georgia Coca-Cola parties, from Arkansas possum-eating clubs to Puget Sound salmon feasts, from Choctaw funerals to South Carolina barbecues, the WPA writers found Americans in their regional niches and eating an enormous diversity of meals. From Mississippi chittlins to Indiana persimmon puddings, Maine lobsters, and Montana beavertails, they recorded the curiosities, commonalities, and communities of American food.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A genuine culinary and historical keepsake: in the late 1930s the WPA farmed out a writing project with the ambition of other New Deal programs: an encyclopedia of American food and food traditions from coast-to-coast similar to the federal travel guides. After Pearl Harbor, the war effort halted the project for good; the book was never published, and the files were archived in the Library of Congress. Food historian Kurlansky (Cod; The Big Oyster) brought the unassembled materials to light and created this version of the guide that never was. In his abridged yet remarkable version, he presents what some of the thousands of writers (among them Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston and Nelson Algren) found: America, its food, its people and its culture, at the precise moment when modernism and progress were kicking into gear. Adhering to the administrators' original organization, the book divides regionally; within each section are entries as specific as A California Grunion Fry, and as general and historical as the one on Sioux and Chippewa Food. Though we've become a fast-food nation, this extraordinary collection—at once history, anthropology, cookbook, almanac and family album—provides a vivid and revitalizing sense of the rural and regional characteristics and distinctions that we've lost and can find again here. (May 14)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Just what we need in hard times, recipes for booya, mullet salad, Georgia possum and taters, kush, and Montana fried beaver tail. Kurlansky, the author of best-selling books about salt, cod, and oysters, discovered these gems in a two-foot-high stack of the “raw, unedited manuscripts” for an inspired but never completed WPA endeavor titled America Eats. As he explains in his invigorating introduction, the Federal Writers’ Project sent starving writers of all stripes (Nelson Algren, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and other who qualified just because they could type) across the country to gather information about “American cookery and the part it has played in national life.” The results are vivid and playful dispatches from pre-interstate, pre-fast-food America, when food was local and cuisine regional. Kurlansky selected zesty writings, factual and imaginative, describing barbecues, fries, and feasts; profiling families; and defining New York City luncheonette slang (“blind ’em” means two eggs fried on both sides). Fun, illuminating, and provocative, this historic reclamation appears while we’re in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the one Franklin D. Roosevelt fought with his job-creating stimulus package and while we’re grappling with a plague of unsafe food and environmental woes associated with industrial agriculture. But don’t despair. Whip up Ethel’s Depression Cake, and throw a bailout party. --Donna Seaman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; First Edition edition (May 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594488657
• ISBN-13: 978-1594488658
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.5 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #216,733 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Kurlansky is a New York Times bestselling and James A. Beard Award-winning author. He is the recipient of a Bon Appétit American Food and Entertaining Award for Food Writer of the Year, and the Glenfiddich Food and Drink Award for Food Book of the year.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

100 of 107 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars "Light But Not Tea Shoppe, Masculine Not Feminine" April 14, 2009

By takingadayoff TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The Federal Writers Project (FWP) put hundreds of writers to work during the Great Depression. The FWP's major project, a series of travel guides of the states, was a beautifully written work by established writers as well as new writers. It was a project whose time had come and the guides were a big hit with Americans who were looking for any excuse to hit the road.

The guides were completed in 1938, but still there was no end in sight to the Depression. The FWP started several new projects, including one called America Eats!, a guide to regional recipes and social traditions involving food. The project got off to a slow start and then after Pearl Harbor, everyone knew it was only a matter of time before funds would be diverted to the military. The unfinished project was sent to the Library of Congress for storage.

Author Mark Kurlansky dug through those old papers, and although the project was incomplete, he found enough to compile a decent collection of food writing from circa 1938.

In keeping with the plan of the America Eats! project, Kurlansky has arranged the book according to region. He introduces the chapters and provides some helpful explanations along the way, but most of the book is written by other people some sixty years ago.

Here's the problem. Much of the writing is indifferent, almost bored. Kurlansky's very interesting introduction explains how the project came about and how money and focus dwindled after Pearl Harbor. It seems as if there may never have been any great enthusiasm for the America Eats! project. The American Guides travel writing project was inspired and inspiring. The writers put everything they had into it, and it shows. The series was wonderful, as guides, or simply as good writing. But food writing was still something relegated to the "women's page" of the newspaper. Many of the writers appeared to think that writing about food and the customs surrounding regional dishes was beneath them. The editor of the America Eats! project, anticipating the writers' reluctance to write about such a frivolous topic, counseled that the writing should be "light but not tea shoppe, masculine not feminine."

Much of the text is simply recipes, or lists of ingredients. Kurlansky's introduction is easily the best part of the book. While I have no doubt that going through those old boxes in the Library of Congress was fascinating, maybe that's where those old typewritten and carbon-copied manuscripts should have remained. Perhaps Patricia Willard had the right idea with her recent book America Eats!: On the Road with the WPA - the Fish Fries, Box Supper Socials, and Chitlin Feasts That Define Real American Food. She also researched the Library of Congress archives and then hit the road to find out if truly regional foods still exist. The result is an entertaining comparison of Depression era American food customs and what remains of them seventy years later.

59 of 65 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A different kind of history book April 15, 2009

By J. Green VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Many years ago I remember seeing a movie about some WWII soldiers assigned to a bomber plane (I think it was "Memphis Belle"). As they're approaching the limit of bombing runs when they'll be discharged they're discussing what they'll do when they get home. One says he's going to open a chain of restaurants across the country and each will have the same name, same menu, and same food. Another says it's a dumb idea, because no one will want to eat the same food they can get at home. He replies, somewhat sheepishly, "sure they will, it's comforting," while everyone laughs. I always thought that was an interesting insight into the nation prior to WWII, and while most histories usually focus on a prominent person or event, they don't often give a very good idea of what it was like for regular people who lived those times. That's one thing that sets this book apart.

During the Great Depression FDR came up with a number of "make-work" projects to keep people employed (as opposed to simply giving welfare). Projects such as the WPA and the CCC gave people the satisfaction of *earning* a living while hopefully providing a service to the community (every time I visit a National Park and see the buildings and trails I think of the CCC - which is how my grandparents met, incidentally). The usefulness and value of these projects could be debated endlessly, but one in particular was called "America Eats" and kept some writers from starving. They were sent out around America to report on the various foods and eating customs that existed in this broad and diverse land. This was in the days before interstate freeways, restaurant chains, refrigerator-freezers, and the low-quality fast food we all live on. Different regions still had very distinct foods and customs, and there wasn't as much uniformity in what we eat across the nation. The war ended this project before it was completed but Mark Kurlansky has dipped into those old archived reports to give us a look at what mealtimes were like and what regular people ate.

In addition to discussing the differences between clam chowder in New York and Boston, he also includes a number of recipes, many of which are in the same summary form they were submitted to the main office prior to any editing or "writing." Where the writer was identifiable he gives a short history on him or her. We recently visited New Mexico and it was interesting to read the account of the meals that were eaten in the field by farmers and their families. One chapter I found especially amusing was called "A Los Angeles Sandwich Called a Taco" which gave all the ways a tortilla could be used, such as burritos, taquitos, chalupas, etc. But the book is filled with interesting tidbits and notes - everything from Choctaw indian foods to slang used in New York luncheonettes - and whether you read it cover to cover or simply pick through it, I think it will certainly be entertaining.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful culinary and cultural history of 20th Century America June 27, 2009

By Jerry Saperstein HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Oh, how they ate!

Long ago, up to just after WWII, the United States was a land of regions. New England was separate and distinct from the South, for example, and the Plains States very different than those two. Culture and cuisine were influenced by local likes and dislikes, mores and folkways. Likewise, refrigerated railway cars and to a far lesser extent weren't nearly as widely used today, so many of the fruits and vegetables we take for granted in grocery stores anywhere in the country today simply weren't as widely available back then.

In short, there was a culinary America before McDonald's and what people ate and why they ate it varied widely across our great land.

During the 1930s, the federal government struggled to put people to work during the Great Depression. One of the make-work outfits was the Federal Writer's Project, called by poet W. H. Auden "one of the noblest and most absurd undertakings ever attempted by any state". Unemployed writers were hired to write.

Mark Kurlansky, who has written utterly enthralling histories of salt and the cod fish, went through the archives of the FWP project on what America ate ("America Eats"). It was the successor to the highly successful series of FWP guidebooks to the various regions of the United States. Kurlansky provides a thorough and informative history of the FWP as an introduction to the book. Some of the best known writers in America were on the government payroll during those dark days.

"America Eats" was never completed. WWII put everyone to work and budgets for the FWP disappeared.

Kurlansky has created an anthology of many of the articles from "America Eats". The quality of the writing goes from dreadful to superb. Many of the articles include recipes, some of which are mouth-watering, while not a few make you want to hold your nose or worse. The differences between the regions is grandly apparent. I particularly enjoyed the story of how "hush puppies" came to be and how they got their name. (I also became ravenously hungry for the best hush puppies I've ever eaten, in a small town in Minnesota.)

Some of the articles, particularly those from the South, reveal how ingrained racial biases were, with language that would never be allowed to see the light of day in a government sponsored project today.

Kurlansky writes an introduction to each region's articles. The book is culinary history, but also cultural history as well, of a land before nationwide restaurant chains, thousands of frozen and canned food items and a concern with sodium and carbs. The differences in our society, the massive class of factory workers in the Northeast, the agrarian society of the South, the robust farmers and laborers of the Midwest are all separated by rich detail.

This is a book for browsing. With several dozen articles divided into five sections, this is a wonderful book for just opening to a page and reading. Make sure you don't do it when you're hungry, though: many of the recipes will leave you on the verge of making gluttony a life goal. The great tragedy is that nearly all this great, carefree cooking and eating has disappeared from our land.

Jerry