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History Reference Center
Full-text articles to support research in history and genealogy and lesson plans to support student learning.
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From hunting and gathering to GMOs and ultraprocessed foods, this expansive tour of human history rewrites the story of our species' and points the way to a better future.The history of Homo sapiens is usually told as a story of technology or economics. But there is a more fundamental driver: food. How we hunted and gathered explains our emergence as a new species and our earliest technology; our first food systems, from fire to agriculture, tell...
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Cookbook author Jessica B. Harris has spent much of her life researching the food and foodways of the African Diaspora. High on the Hog is the culmination of years of her work, and the result is an engaging history of African American cuisine. Harris takes the reader on a harrowing journey from Africa across the Atlantic to America, tracking the trials that the people and the food have undergone along the way. From chitlins and ham hocks to fried...
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"From the Smithsonian Institution, the real story of the American table in a collection of snapshots, stories, and recipes from the pre-colonial era through today, including the people and events that have often been left out. In this exploration of the American table, the Smithsonian Institution presents a fresh look at what and how we've fed ourselves, for sustenance and for pleasure, through the lens of location, immigration, ingenuity, innovation,...
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"In Diner, dudes, and diets, Emily Contois examines contemporary food culture and a variety of its consumer products to reveal how the food, marketing, and media industries sought to create new markets by catering to men through the idea of 'the dude.' Contois identifies today's 'dude masculinity' as arising from a late twentieth-century crisis in traditional gender roles at a time of major social, cultural, and economic change. Though the term 'dude'...
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"What if you couldn't afford nine dollar tomatoes? That was the question award-winning journalist Tracie McMillan couldn't escape as she watched the debate about America's meals unfold, one that urges us to pay food's true cost - which is to say, pay more. So in 2009 McMillan embarked on a groundbreaking undercover journey to see what it takes to eat well in America. For nearly a year, she worked, ate, and lived alongside the working poor to examine...
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The true adventures of David Fairchild, a late-nineteenth-century food explorer who traveled the globe and introduced diverse crops like avocados, mangoes, seedless grapes--and thousands more--to the American plate.
"In the nineteenth century American meals were about subsistence, not enjoyment. Agriculture yielded stable, basic crops like soybeans, corn, and barley, and few growers considered variety or flavor. But as a new century approached, appetites...
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"An enlightening narrative history--an entertaining fusion of Tom Wolfe and Michael Pollan--that traces the colorful origins of once unconventional foods and the diverse fringe movements, charismatic gurus, and counterculture elements that brought them to the mainstream and created a distinctly American cuisine. Food writer Jonathan Kauffman journeys back more than half a century--to the 1960s and 1970s--to tell the story of how a coterie of unusual...
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A colorful, spirited tour of culinary attitudes, tastes, and techniques throughout colonial America.
Confronted by unfamiliar animals, plants, and landscapes, settlers in the colonies and West Indies found new ways to produce food. Integrating their British and European tastes with the demands and bounty of the rugged American environment, early Americans developed a range of regional cuisines. From the kitchen tables of typical Puritan families...
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From table talk to farmers' markets, analyzing the cultural politics of what and how we eat. This audiobook explores the idea that table activities - the mealtime rituals of food preparation, serving, and dining - lay the foundation for a proper education on the value of civility, the importance of the common good, and what it means to be a good citizen. The arts of conversation and diplomatic speech are learned and practiced at tables, and a political...
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"[T]races the history of African American food habits from West African origins through the twenty-first century, offering a unique set of insights into the daily concerns of black people in the US. The book demonstrates that from capture and enslavement through emancipation, the civil rights movement, and beyond, African American have embraced an understanding of the importance of food that goes beyond merely having enough to eat"--
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In 1784, Thomas Jefferson struck a deal with one of his slaves, James Hemings. The founding father was traveling to Paris and wanted to bring James along to master the art of French cooking. In exchange for James's cooperation, Jefferson would grant his freedom. Thus began one of the strangest partnerships in United States history. As Hemings apprenticed under master French chefs, Jefferson studied the cultivation of French crops so they might be...
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