How America Eats: A Social History of U.S. Food and Culture

I love cooking and understanding the history behind cuisine of different regions.  This book combined cuisine, culture, and history to tell a very interesting story about the development of American cuisine.

The book discusses how pilgrims had food shortfalls and what they did to survive - adapting their European wheat-based diet to America's corn-based diet, and importing African slaves for agriculture.  As a result, early American cuisine was a blend of European, Native American, and African cuisines.

Later in the book, the focus shifts to industrialized food production and women's roles in how food was marketed to people.  There was also discussion of the incorporation of Italian, Chinese and Mexican cuisines, and the perception of those cultures and food.

It was a really interesting book, and shows that American cuisine is as rich as the history that set the foundation for it.