A Return to Simpler Times

The Food of a Younger Land
Mark Kurlansky

This is a hard book to summarize, so I'm going to allow the book jacket to do the honors:

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.

I was fascinated by the eating habits of America's younger years, and even marked a few recipes to try later. The book is divided into geographical sections (the Northeast, the Southwest, etc.) and I enjoyed seeing how traditions varied from place to place.

In fact, in reading The Food of a Younger Land I couldn't help but think the authors of The Liberation Diet would enjoy this book. In the past, Americans ate lots of whole-fat foods, lots of animal fats, and lots of locally grown produce. I'm still not swayed.

In a nutshell: This is not a book to be read straight-through, as one would a novel, but rather to be digested slowly, in small bites, as one would a sumptuous feast.

Bibliolatry Scale: 5 out of 6 stars