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Heaven on the Half Shell

The Story of the Oyster in the Pacific Northwest

By David George Gordon, Samantha Larson, and MaryAnn Barron Wagner. Foreword by Kenneth K. Chew

Heaven on the Half Shell offers a thoroughly researched and richly illustrated history of the Pacific Northwest’s beloved bivalve, the oyster. Starting with the earliest evidence of sea gardens and clam beds from 11,500 years...

Communist Pigs

An Animal History of East Germany's Rise and Fall

By Thomas Fleischman. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

The pig played a key role in the German Democratic Republic's attempts to create a modern, industrial food system built on communist principles. By the mid-1980s, East Germany produced more pork per capita than West...

Heritage Drinks of Myanmar

By Luke J. Corbin. Photographs by Shwe Paw Mya Tin

Heritage Drinks of Myanmar takes the reader on an anthropological journey through emerald mountains and rust-red valleys to showcase some of the myriad alcoholic drinks made in this unique and fascinating country. In Myanmar, freshly...

A Drum in One Hand, a Sockeye in the Other

Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast

By Charlotte Coté

In the dense rainforest of the west coast of Vancouver Island, the Somass River (c̓uumaʕas) brings sockeye salmon (miʕaat) into the Nuu-chah-nulth community of Tseshaht. C̓uumaʕas and miʕaat are central to the sacred food practices...

The $16 Taco

Contested Geographies of Food, Ethnicity, and Gentrification

By Pascale Joassart-Marcelli

Having “discovered” the flavors of barbacoa, bibimbap, bánh mi, sambusas, and pupusas, white middle-class eaters are increasingly venturing into historically segregated neighborhoods in search of “authentic” eateries run by—and for—immigrants and people of color. This...

Hatched

Dispatches from the Backyard Chicken Movement

By Gina G. Warren

“Chickens are a lot more mainstream than veganism and a little bit like kombucha: super weird twenty years ago, now somewhat popular and made even more so by logos, brands, and hashtags.” So begins Gina...

Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian

The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India

By James Staples. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Bovine politics exposes fault lines within contemporary Indian society, where eating beef is simultaneously a violation of sacred taboos, an expression of marginalized identities, and a route to cosmopolitan sophistication. The recent rise of Hindu...

Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet

Eating with the World in Mind

By Nico Slate

Mahatma Gandhi redefined nutrition as fundamental to building a more just world. What he chose to eat was intimately tied to his beliefs, and his key values of nonviolence, religious tolerance, and rural sustainability developed...

Tasting Paradise on Earth

Jiangnan Foodways

By Jin Feng

Preparing and consuming food is an integral part of identity formation, which in contemporary China embodies tension between fast-forward modernization and cultural nostalgia. Jin Feng’s wide-ranging exploration of cities in the Lower Yangzi Delta—or Jiangnan,...

The Deepest Roots

Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island

By Kathleen Alcalá

As friends began “going back to the land” at the same time that a health issue emerged, Kathleen Alcalá set out to reexamine her relationship with food at the most local level. Remembering her parents,...

The Other Milk

Reinventing Soy in Republican China

By Jia-Chen Fu

In the early twentieth century, China was stigmatized as the “Land of Famine.” Meanwhile in Europe and the United States, scientists and industrialists seized upon the soybean as a miracle plant that could help build...

Organic Sovereignties

Struggles over Farming in an Age of Free Trade

By Guntra A. Aistara

This first sustained ethnographic study of organic agriculture outside the United States traces its meanings, practices, and politics in two nations typically considered worlds apart: Latvia and Costa Rica. Situated on the frontiers of the...

A Year Right Here

Adventures with Food and Family in the Great Nearby

By Jess Thomson

Armed with “The Here List” and a Type-A personality, Seattle-based writer and cookbook author Jess Thomson sets out to spend a year exploring the food of the Pacific Northwest with her family. Planning to revel...

With Our Own Hands

A Celebration of Food and Life in the Pamir Mountains of Afghanistan and Tadjikistan

By Frederik Van Oudenhoven and Jamila Haider

Winner of the 2016 Best Cookbook of the Year award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards

This book tells the story of the Afghan and Tajik Pamir Mountains, the old traditions and rapid changes in people’s...

Swallowing Clouds

A Playful Journey through Chinese Culture, Language, and Cuisine

By A. Zee. With a new afterword by Linda Rui Feng

Physics professor Zee writes about how to understand the menus in Chinese restaurants, explaining the characters, what they mean, and the colorful stories behind the names of various dishes. Anne Tyler (in the Washington Post)...

Puer Tea

Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

By Jinghong Zhang

Puer tea has been grown for centuries in the “Six Great Tea Mountains” of Yunnan Province, and in imperial China it was a prized commodity, traded to Tibet by horse or mule caravan via the...

Greening Cities, Growing Communities

By Jeffrey Hou, Julie M. Johnson, and Laura J. Lawson

Although there are thousands of community gardens across North America, only Seattle and a few other cities include them in their urban development plans. While the conditions and experiences in Seattle may be unique, the...

The Earth's Blanket

Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living

By Nancy J. Turner

This is a thought-provoking look at Native American stories, cultural institutions, and ways of knowing, and what they can teach us about living sustainably.

Faith, Food, and Family in a Yupik Whaling Community

By Carol Zane Jolles and Elinor Mikaghaq Oozeva

For more than fifteen hundred years Yupik and proto-Yupik Eskimo peoples have lived at the site of the Alaskan village of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island. Their history is a record of family and kin,...

To Fish in Common

The Ethnohistory of Lummi Indian Salmon Fishing

By Daniel L. Boxberger. Foreword by Chris Friday