Summer reading used to be limited to light novels. But in recent years many culinary memoirs and other food books have been released during summer to satisfy food-loving readers. Here are three that have crossed my desk this summer.
What the Great Ate
, by Matthew Jacob and Mark Jacob, Three Rivers Press, $14.
This book is perhaps my favorite of the bunch. It mixes food, history and celebrity curiosity. The Jacob brothers cover a lot of ground, from Roman times to the 21st century. They also include titans of history, such as Gandhi and Dickens, and the very famous in a wide variety of professions, from golfer Ben Hogan to actress Angelina Jolie. The best part is that the Jacobs don't simply tell us what these people ate. They also give us anecdotes that let us glimpse into their lives. Gen. (and later President) Dwight D. Eisenhower decided that soldiers "would fight for Coke," so he had 3 million bottles shipped to the European front during World War II. It's hard to believe, but Germans didn't eat potatoes until Prussian ruler Frederick the Great forced a hungry nation to plant them, sending soldiers "to stand over his subjects in the fields … at the risk of having their ears and noses cut off if they refused." This is one book I had a hard time putting down.
Fannie's Last Supper
, by Christopher Kimball, Hyperion, $25.99.
Kimball, the hard-working founder of the America's Test Kitchen empire that includes Cook's Illustrated magazine, has always been an advocate of America's culinary traditions.
Here, he delves into The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, arguably America's most popular cookbook before The Joy of Cooking usurped it. Fannie Farmer's book, written in 1896, sold 360,000 copies by her death in 1915. While acknowledging the book's and Farmer's flaws -- including some barely edible recipes -- Kimball sets out to cook a 12-course meal from her book in a Victorian house, using 19th-century stoves and other equipment. He spends months testing and refining the recipes, which include mock turtle soup, molded jellies and roast goose. Fannie's Last Supper chronicles Kimball's two-year project -- or obsession. People familiar with the meticulousness of Cook's Illustrated will be prepared for the technical minutia. But Kimball happily digresses into discussions of America's culinary history, often drawing lines of comparison to the present, which makes the book a valuable lesson for anyone interested in American food.
Chasing the White Dog
, by Max Watman, Simon & Schuster, $25.
Max Watman, a New York journalist, had his first taste of moonshine in 1999. It apparently stuck with him. Years later, he found himself burying his nose in the archives at Appalachian State University and driving all over the North Carolina mountains in search of any moonshiner who would talk to him. Chasing the White Dog is both an informal history of moonshine in the United States, as well as the personal tale of how Watman uncovered the story. The world of moonshine has so many colorful characters, and Watman's narrative style has a way of bringing them to life. There's a lot of North Carolina in this book, including Junior Johnson, who turned his talents as a fast-driving moonshiner into a career as a champion stock-car racer. Watman even went to Pocono Raceway to drive a race car as a way of getting a feel for what moonshiners and stock-car racers experienced. Interspersed in the chronicles of Watman's research are descriptions of his own attempts to make moonshine. Part of what makes this book interesting is that Watman is interested in more than just the history of moonshine. He really likes to drink the stuff, too.
mhastings@wsjournal.com
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