Buy Used

$6.89

Used: Good | Details

Sold by rushhourbusiness

Fulfilled by Amazon

Condition: Used: Good

Comment: Used Good copy MAY have signs of cover wear and/or marks on corners and page edges. Inside pages may have minor to moderate highlighting, writing and underlining., dust jacket may be missing.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

109 used & new from $0.01

See All Buying Options

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food Hardcover – Deckle Edge, October 25, 2011

by Adam Gopnik (Author)

49 customer reviews

See all 10 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Amazon Price New from Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$12.98

—

Hardcover, Deckle Edge

"Please retry"

—

$5.45

$0.01

Paperback

"Please retry"

$11.22

$4.68

$2.25

Audio CD

"Please retry"

—

$13.81

Unknown Binding

"Please retry"

—

$2,885.11

$15.81

Never before have we cared so much about food. It preoccupies our popular culture, our fantasies, and even our moralizing—“You still eat meat?” With our top chefs as deities and finest restaurants as places of pilgrimage, we have made food the stuff of secular seeking and transcendence, finding heaven in a mouthful. But have we come any closer to discovering the true meaning of food in our lives?

With inimitable charm and learning, Adam Gopnik takes us on a beguiling journey in search of that meaning as he charts America’s recent and rapid evolution from commendably aware eaters to manic, compulsive gastronomes. It is a journey that begins in eighteenth-century France—the birthplace of our modern tastes (and, by no coincidence, of the restaurant)—and carries us to the kitchens of the White House, the molecular meccas of Barcelona, and beyond. To understand why so many of us apparently live to eat, Gopnik delves into the most burning questions of our time, including: Should a Manhattanite bother to find chicken killed in the Bronx? Is a great vintage really any better than a good bottle of wine? And: Why does dessert matter so much?

Throughout, he reminds us of a time-honored truth often lost amid our newfound gastronomic pieties and certitudes: What goes on the table has never mattered as much to our lives as what goes on around the table—the scene of families, friends, lovers coming together, or breaking apart; conversation across the simplest or grandest board. This, ultimately, is who we are.

Following in the footsteps of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Adam Gopnik gently satirizes the entire human comedy of the comestible as he surveys the wide world of taste that we have lately made our home. The Table Comes First is the delightful beginning of a new conversation about the way we eat now.

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Adam Gopnik

201

Paperback
$11.22
Adam Gopnik

10

Hardcover
$30.69
Adam Gopnik

24

Paperback
$13.73
Adam Gopnik

201

Hardcover
David Lebovitz

369

Paperback
$7.50
Hardcover

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (October 25, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307593452
ISBN-13: 978-0307593450
Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #333,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #277 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > European > French
- #441 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking Education & Reference > Essays
- #442 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking Education & Reference > History

Would you like to update product info, give feedback on images, or tell us about a lower price?

Related Media

Customer Reviews

3.4 out of 5 stars

5 star		31%
4 star		21%
3 star		20%
2 star		14%
1 star		14%

See all 49 customer reviews

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 80 people found the following review helpful

Good in parts, not as a whole

By Malfoyfan on November 29, 2011

Format: Hardcover

I was just looking at the reviews of this book, which I finished last night, and I'm in agreement with a couple of people here - this book can be entertaining at times, but as a whole it didn't work that well for me. I enjoy Gopnik's New Yorker pieces, or I did when I was taking the magazine. They were always well-written and to the point. However, in this book, his writing seemed to get away from him. Run-on sentences galore, and most chapters went on longer than they needed to. IMO, if a chapter FEELS long while I'm reading it, and I'm thinking, please, just get on with it already, some editing is in order. I also thought the emails to the long-dead English writer Elizabeth Pennell were unnecessary and didn't contribute to the book. Gopnik is obviously a very educated person and did a lot of research for the book, and some of it is very interesting, but compared to MFK Fisher, Ruth Reichl, and Laurie Colwin, to name a few, he doesn't measure up as a food writer. I don't have a post-grad degree, but I read a lot of books (including books about food, cooking and farming) and it just didn't entertain or enlighten me enough to recommend it.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful

Good Idea, tooooo long.

By Jesse K. dart on December 6, 2011

Format: Hardcover

I'm a fan of his writing in general, and in fact his previous books were really good. I follow him on the New Yorker as well, and those articles are also generally well thought out and edited, also researched. This book is too long. It rambles through some interesting historical points, but while going nowhere. I read alot of food books, web sites, blogs, etc. and the information in the book makes me think that Mr Gopnik is completly out of touch with other food writing today. He says he loves food which you can see from his other writing, but this book desperately needed to be edited down to something more coherent and manageable. The emails are not really interesting enough to be in the book.

If your looking to buy an Adam Gopnik book, you can by any of the others and have a winner. If you want a book on gastronomy, French Cooking, or food history, there is a list a mile long that will serve you better.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

Appetizing but unsatisfying.

By Eric Leventhal on January 24, 2012

Format: Hardcover

Adam Gopnik's earlier book, Paris to the Moon, delighted me with its insight, charm and wit. So when I heard Gopnik interviewed on NPR about his latest book THE TABLE COMES FIRST, it became an instant must read. I am sorry to say this volume does not live up to expectations.

THE TABLE is meant to be the insightful exploration of the meaning of gathering for a meal at home or in a restaurant, as the jacket blurb promises. It is in reality a report on trends: localism, slow food, quantitative wine reviews and the so-called crisis in French cooking, with some observations about family and France along the way. Info that is timely, not timeless.

PARIS/MOON recreates the experience of living among the French. Gopnik's combination of close observation and historic review reveals what feels like the truth about French civilization-- a key to understanding the nation and people. And he does so with elan and many a bon mot.

In this work only his demi chapter on the origin of the cookbook recaptures the tone of delightful discovery, dry wit and ironic bewilderment I so much enjoy and admire in his earlier writing.

Gopnik devotes a chapter to `taste,' a topic that has entire books devoted to it. The question of Taste and her sisters Manners and Morals involves anthropology, sociology, history and religion. To squeeze it into just a chapter, the author covers huge swaths of intellectual territory at a brisk clip. His offering is (to use culinary metaphors) half baked, dense and hard to digest. After this didactic, half-convincing introduction of the main topic, the rest of the book feels flimsy.Read more ›

1 Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful

I Can't Warm Up to Adam Gopnik Books

By James Ellsworth on December 28, 2011

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

As much as I like to read food writing, I do not get what I am looking for from Adam Gopnik. There are plenty of words--almost too many--and once in a while I find an interesting insight. In the end, I find myself craving more information about technique. Gopnik seems to look at dining as an extension of other sensory experiences and his comparing food and sexual experiences strikes me as being aside from the point. In this regard, his writing and my reading tastes are not compatible--although I do not mean to suggest he is all the time talking about some sexual equivalent of every food experience. Gopnik is no Jeffrey Steingarten and I much prefer the latter for his sense of manic experimentation with how food is best prepared.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful

Ugh...tedious

By K. Marcum on January 1, 2012

Format: Hardcover

I absolutely love Adam Gopnik's writing. Paris to the Moon is one of my favorite nonfiction books--to me, a perfect combination of the public and the personal. Gopnik's strength is the ability to observe something carefully and well and then comment on it in ways that take it from the singular to the universal. My favorite parts of his writing are these careful rhapsodies, grounded in the real. I also love food writing, and have been reading anything I can get my hands on for at least the last decade. So when I heard he was coming out with a food book, I couldn't wait to read it. Now I've been carrying it around on my iPad for several weeks and can't get through more than a couple of pages at a time.

I loved the introduction, and his comment on how historically food writing has concerned itself more with what happens around the table than what's on it. (Yes, I thought, and that's what I hate about food tv). But it ground to a halt not long after that. I do recognize pieces here and there that appeared in the New Yorker, and they are better--more entertaining and tightly focused--than the material at surrounds it. But mostly the book just drags on. Gopnik rhapsodizes and rhapsodizes, but it's not balanced by his traditional research and sharp observations. And so it grows tedious. Skip this one and read anything else of his.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

See all 49 customer reviews (newest first)

Write a customer review

Most Recent Customer Reviews

A Bit Off Gopnik's Best, But Still Superb

To see Adam Gopnik on the byline of a New Yorker article is to realize that you are in for a treat of fine writing and trenchant observation. Read more

Published 1 month ago by John D. Cofield

but it's a dang good read for anyone interested in any of the three...

Somehow family and France as related to the meaning of food don't always get the attention promised them, but it's a dang good read for anyone interested in any of the three... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Nicholas

Three Stars

Good read

Published 4 months ago by L. Miller

Adam Gopnik is one of my favorite writers from the New Yorker Magazine

Adam Gopnik is one of my favorite writers from the New Yorker Magazine. As a woman of French inheritance I totally agree that the table comes first. Read more

Published 6 months ago by Jackie LePut

Gopnik is Always a Good Read

A bit over-intellectualized, but like all Adam Gopnik's writing, a good read. I recommend it.

Published 7 months ago by L. K. Julow

One Star

Read the first chapter.

Published 9 months ago by Emilymb

"Recognizably sublime moments and weirdly remote rhetorical...

Adam Gopnik’s The Table Comes First: Family, France and the Meaning of Food covers a wide range of topics, from profiles of restaurateurs to philosophical arguments regarding... Read more

Published 10 months ago by Andrea Broomfield

Three Stars

I loved his "From Paris to the Moon." This one not too interesting.

Published 12 months ago by Karin Roof

But the length of the book may be too much of a good thing, depending...

“The Table Comes First”
I became enamored by Adam Gopnik’s writing in the New Yorker and thus I looked forward to reading this book. Read more

Published 12 months ago by Enthusiast

Always insightful

For fellow Francophiles Gopnik more than any other writer I know wrestles intelligently with what we both love and loathe about the French condition.

Published 18 months ago by Michael Freedman