"From the author of the acclaimed 97 Orchard and her husband, a culinary historian, an in-depth exploration of the greatest food crisis the nation has ever faced -- the Great Depression -- and how it transformed America's culinary culture. The decade-long Great Depression, a period of shifts in the country's political and social landscape, forever changed the way America eats. Before 1929, America's relationship with food was defined by abundance....

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...