BiblioVault - Books about Bread

The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700-1775

Steven Laurence Kaplan

Duke University Press, 1996

In preindustrial Europe, dependence on grain shaped every phase of life from economic development to spiritual expression, and the problem of subsistence dominated the everyday order of things in a merciless and unremitting way. Steven Laurence Kaplan’s The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700–1775 focuses on the production and distribution of France’s most important commodity in the sprawling urban center of eighteenth-century Paris where provisioning needs were most acutely felt and most difficult to satisfy. Kaplan shows how the relentless demand for bread constructed the pattern of daily life in Paris as decisively and subtly as elaborate protocol governed the social life at Versailles.
Despite the overpowering salience of bread in public and private life, Kaplan’s is the first inquiry into the ways bread exercised its vast and significant empire. Bread framed dreams as well as nightmares. It was the staff of life, the medium of communion, a topic of common discourse, and a mark of tradition as well as transcendence. In his exploration of bread’s materiality and cultural meaning, Kaplan looks at bread’s fashioning of identity and examines the conditions of supply and demand in the marketplace. He also sets forth a complete history of the bakers and their guild, and unmasks the methods used by the authorities in their efforts to regulate trade.
Because the bakers and their bread were central to Parisian daily life, Kaplan’s study is also a comprehensive meditation on an entire society, its government, and its capacity to endure. Long-awaited by French history scholars, The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700–1775 is a landmark in eighteenth-century historiography, a book that deeply contextualizes, and thus enriches our understanding of one of the most important eras in European history.

[more]

Bread

A Memoir of Hunger

Lisa Knopp

University of Missouri Press, 2025

When she was 54, Lisa Knopp’s weight dropped to a number on the scale that she hadn’t seen since seventh grade. The severe food restricting that left her thin and sick when she was 15 and 25 had returned. This time, she was determined to understand the causes of her malady and how she could heal from a condition that is caused by a tangle of genetic, biological, familial, psychological, cultural, and spiritual factors. This compelling memoir, at once a food and illness narrative, explores the forces that cause eating disorders and disordered eating, including the link between those conditions in women, middle-aged and older, and the fear of aging and ageism.

Winner of the 2017 Nebraska Book Award for Memoir

2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

[more]

Bread and Roses

Gender and Class Under Capitalism

Andrea D'Atri

Pluto Press, 2021

Is it possible to develop a radical socialist feminism that fights for the emancipation of women and of all humankind? This book is a journey through the history of feminism. Using the concrete struggles of women, the Marxist feminist Andrea D'Atri traces the history of the women's and workers' movement from the French Revolution to Queer Theory. She analyzes the divergent paths feminists have woven for their liberation from oppression and uncovers where they have hit dead ends. With the global working class made up of a disproportionate number of women, women are central in leading the charge for the next revolution and laying down blueprints for an alternative future. D’Atri makes a fiery plea for dismantling capitalist patriarchy.

[more]

Bread and Tea

The Story of a Man from Karak

Ahmad Tarawneh

Michigan State University Press, 2017

In this post–Arab Spring novel, Ahmad Tarawneh tells the story of conflicting loyalties between two Jordanian brothers, one who serves in the Jordanian national security division, and another who belongs to an extremist militant Islamic group. With boldness, clarity, and an insider’s eye, Tarawneh addresses the root causes and circumstances that lead a desperate young Jordanian to be recruited into a terrorist organization, tempted by the lure of glory purported by a skillful, self-serving sheikh. The novel depicts the positive and negative forces that influence the two brothers in their soul-searching quests for self-actualization that lead to more questions than answers—questions many Arab youth still ask today, while engulfed in their own raging struggles over tradition, religion, modernity, and secularism. Readers find themselves on an intimate journey into the minds and hearts of the protagonists to witness the tragedy and absurdity of this conflict and the magnitude of the human destruction it leaves behind.

[more]

Bread and Work

The Experience of Unemployment 1918-39

Matt Perry

Pluto Press, 2000

Between the world wars, unemployment spread throughout the industrialised world like a disease. In Bread and Work, Matt Perry places this global unemployment crisis in its proper international context. Focusing on Britain, Europe and the United States, he compares and contrasts popular attitudes and the government response toward unemployment.

Looking beyond statistics and economic cycles, Perry investigates the human impact of unemployment. He uncovers the experience of being jobless from the perspective of those who lived through it, their employers and their communities. He uses oral history, memoirs, literary accounts, and newspaper articles to reveal the reality of unemployment.

Perry argues that the scale of the crisis has been minimised by historians who have tended to emphasise that prolonged unemployment was the problem of the distressed fringe.

Finally, Perry argues that the lessons of the 1930s have direct relevance today since the structural problems of industrial capitalism remain inherent.

[more]

Bread from Heaven

An Introduction to the Theology of the Eucharist

Bernhard Blankenhorn

Catholic University of America Press, 2021

Bread from Heaven offers a contemporary theological synthesis on the Eucharist that brings together classical and critical biblical exegesis, debates on the early history of the Christian liturgy, patristic doctrine, the teachings offered by the Councils of Florence, Trent and Vatican II, and the Church’s lex orandi, all within a framework provided by the Eucharistic theology of Thomas Aquinas. The volume begins with Christ’s Bread of Life discourse in John 6, in light of the Old Testament theme of the manna, and the Synoptic accounts of the Last Supper. These biblical texts offer solid foundation for a theology of Eucharistic sacrifice, presence and Communion. It then continues with a historical and systematic study of the institution of the Eucharist by Christ, with special attention given to the emergence of the first Eucharistic prayers. Then follows a survey of key Christological and ecclesiological themes which undergird Eucharistic theology. The chapters on Eucharistic sacrifice and presence form the heart of the work. Here, the focus moves to key conciliar, patristic and Thomistic insights on these themes. Bread from Heaven clarifies misunderstandings of Eucharistic sacrifice and renders transubstantiation accessible to beginners. Blankenhorn concludes with a study of the consecration, the minister of the Eucharist and the fruits of communion. The chapter on the debate over the words of institution and the epiclesis gives a fresh perspective that integrates both eastern and western tradition. The study of the Eucharistic celebrant strikes a balance between a spirituality of the priest as acting in persona Christi and of the priest as praying in persona ecclesiae. The concluding chapter centers on the Eucharist’s unitive, mystical fruits in the Church. This textbook is ideal for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course on Eucharistic theology. It also seeks to advance the debate on several controversial historical and speculative issues in sacramental theology.

[more]

Bread, Justice, and Liberty

Grassroots Activism and Human Rights in Pinochet's Chile

Alison J. Bruey

University of Wisconsin Press, 2020

In Santiago's urban shantytowns, a searing history of poverty and Chilean state violence have prompted grassroots resistance movements among the poor and working class from the 1940s to the present. Underscoring this complex continuity, Alison J. Bruey offers a compelling history of the struggle for social justice and democracy during the Pinochet dictatorship and its aftermath.

As Bruey shows, crucial to the popular movement built in the 1970s were the activism of both men and women and the coalition forged by liberation-theology Catholics and Marxist-Left militants. These alliances made possible the mass protests of the 1980s that paved the way for Chile's return to democracy, but the changes fell short of many activists' hopes. Their grassroots demands for human rights encompassed not just an end to state terror but an embrace of economic opportunity and participatory democracy for all.

Deeply grounded by both extensive oral history interviews and archival research, Bread, Justice, and Liberty offers innovative contributions to scholarship on Chilean history, social movements, popular protest and democratization, neoliberal economics, and the Cold War in Latin America.

[more]

Bread of Dreams

Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe

Piero Camporesi

University of Chicago Press, 1989

In a rich and engaging book that illuminates the lives and attitudes of peasants in preindustrial Europe, Piero Camporesi makes the unexpected and fascinating claim that these people lived in a state of almost permanent hallucination, drugged by their very hunger or by bread adulterated with hallucinogenic herbs. The use of opiate products, administered even to infants and children, was widespread and was linked to a popular mythology in which herbalists and exorcists were important cultural figures. Through a careful reconstruction of the everyday lives of peasants, beggars, and the poor, Camporesi presents a vivid and disconcerting image of early modern Europe as a vast laboratory of dreams.

"Camporesi is as much a poet as a historian. . . . His appeal is to the senses as well as to the mind. . . . Fascinating in its details and compelling in its overall message."—Vivian Nutton, Times Literary Supplement

"It is not often that an academic monograph in history is also a book to fascinate the discriminating general reader. Bread of Dreams is just that."—Kenneth McNaught, Toronto Star

"Not religion but bread was the opiate of the poor, Mr. Camporesi argues. . . . Food has always been a social and mythological construct that conditions what we vainly imagine to be matters of personal taste. Our hunger for such works should tell us that food is not only good but essential to think and to read as if our lives depended on it, which they do."—Betty Fussell, New York Times Book Review

[more]

Bread of the Moment

Poems

David Sanders

Ohio University Press, 2021

A collection of poems about time, solitude, and wisdom that leads readers to hover between acceptance of and alienation from our fragility.

Bread of the Moment, the follow-up to David Sanders' Compass and Clock (Swallow Press, 2016), devotes keen attention to the porous nature of the past and how the unbidden evidence of ordinary life pervades the world, provoking a spectrum of moments from which to draw meaning and find solace. These poems, characterized by a mix of free and formal verse, depict quiet days at home or in nature, as well as close calls and brushes with death: chronic illness, a house fire, a car crushed by a boulder.

In this way, these poems amplify the fragility of the commonplace, a mystery from which we are, amid the noise of our everyday lives, sometimes estranged. Through this exploration, Sanders constructs a precarious balance between alienation and acceptance, striking a note at once recognizable and new.

[more]

The Bread of Those Early Years

Heinrich Boll

Northwestern University Press, 1994

Bread, Wine, and Money

The Windows of the Trades at Chartres Cathedral

Jane Welch Williams

University of Chicago Press, 1993

At Chartres Cathedral, for the first time in medieval art, the lowest register of stained-glass windows depicts working artisans and merchants instead of noble and clerical donors. Jane Welch Williams challenges the prevailing view that pious town tradesmen donated these windows. In Bread, Wine, and Money, she uncovers a deep antagonism between the trades and the cathedral clergy in Chartres; the windows, she argues, portray not town tradesmen but trusted individuals that the fearful clergy had taken into the cloister as their own serfs.

Williams weaves a tight net of historical circumstances, iconographic traditions, exegetical implications, political motivations, and liturgical functions to explain the imagery in the windows of the trades. Her account of changing social relationships in thirteenth-century Chartres focuses on the bakers, tavern keepers, and money changers whose bread, wine, and money were used as means of exchange, tithing, and offering throughout medieval society. Drawing on a wide variety of original documents and scholarly work, this book makes important new contributions to our knowledge of one of the great monuments of Western culture.

[more]

Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread

Thirtieth Anniversary Edition

Crescent Dragonwagon

University of Arkansas Press, 2021

For nearly two decades, Dairy Hollow House—a country inn and restaurant tucked into the Ozark Mountain resort town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas—welcomed guests from all over the world. Praised by the New York Times, Southern Living, Bon Appetit, and Good Morning America alike, the much-loved inn offered sparklingly fresh, innovative “nouveau’zarks” cuisine—respectful contemporary interpretations of local traditional cooking infused with seasonal ingredients. Although the famed inn is now closed, you can still enjoy the satisfying and life-affirming dishes by the James Beard Award–winning writer/restaurateur Crescent Dragonwagon in this thirtieth-anniversary edition of Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread, a story rich cookbook as gutsy and distinctive as a steaming bowl of Gumbo Zeb.

[more]

Good Bread Is Back

A Contemporary History of French Bread, the Way It Is Made, and the People Who Make It

Steven Laurence Kaplan

Duke University Press, 2006

In Good Bread Is Back, historian and leading French bread expert Steven Laurence Kaplan takes readers into aromatic Parisian bakeries as he explains how good bread began to reappear in France in the 1990s, following almost a century of decline in quality. Kaplan describes how, while bread comprised the bulk of the French diet during the eighteenth century, by the twentieth, per capita consumption had dropped off precipitously. This was largely due to social and economic modernization and the availability of a wider choice of foods. But part of the problem was that the bread did not taste good. In a culture in which bread is sacrosanct, bad bread was more than a gastronomical disappointment; it was a threat to France's sense of itself. By the mid-1990s bakers rallied, and bread officially designated as "bread of the French tradition" was in demand throughout Paris. Kaplan meticulously describes good bread's ideal crust and crumb (interior), mouth feel, aroma, and taste. He discusses the breadmaking process in extraordinary detail, from the ingredients to the kneading, shaping, and baking, and even the sound bread should make when it comes out of the oven. Kaplan does more than tell the story of the revival of good bread in France. He makes the reader see, smell, taste, feel, and even hear why it is so very wonderful that good bread is back.

[more]

Peace and Bread in Time of War

Jane Addams

University of Illinois Press, 2002

First published in 1922 during the "Red Scare," by which time Jane Addams's pacifist efforts had adversely affected her popularity as an author and social reformer, Peace and Bread in Time of War is Addams's eighth book and the third to deal with her thoughts on pacifism.

Addams's unyielding pacifism during the Great War drew criticism from politicians and patriots who deemed her the "most dangerous woman in America." Even those who had embraced her ideals of social reform condemned her outspoken opposition to U.S. entry into World War I or were ambivalent about her peace platforms. Turning away from the details of the war itself, Addams relies on memory and introspection in this autobiographical portrayal of efforts to secure peace during the Great War. "I found myself so increasingly reluctant to interpret the motives of other people that at length I confined all analysis of motives to my own," she writes. Using the narrative technique she described in The Long Road of Women's Memory, an extended musing on the roles of memory and myth in women's lives, Addams also recalls attacks by the press and defends her political ideals.

Katherine Joslin's introduction provides additional historical context to Addams's involvement with the Woman's Peace Party, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and her work on Herbert Hoover's campaign to provide relief and food to women and children in war-torn enemy countries.

[more]

Quick Breads

Beatrice Ojakangas

University of Minnesota Press, 2003

Scrumptious breads perfect for today’s busy cook

Easy and delicious quick breads are perfect for adding that special something to an otherwise dull meal. Renowned baker Beatrice Ojakangas presents more than sixty tasty and inventive recipes, including hearty Cheddar Apple Bread, Sour Cream Cinnamon Coffee Cake, and Hot Pepper and Bacon Corn Bread. She also serves up quick versions of such classics as aromatic Herbed Irish Soda Bread, German Stollen, Scandinavian Julekage, and the sweetly perfumed Italian Panettone.

Quick breads require no kneading or rising, and most can be assembled in ten to fifteen minutes. Ojakangas provides recipes for tea breads, fruit and nut breads, sticks and rolls, coffee cakes, and holiday breads. An added bonus is her selection of recipes for spreads—flavored butters and cream cheeses—to enhance the taste of quick breads. With easy-to-follow directions and helpful hints, this is a cookbook for novice and expert bakers alike.

[more]

Science, Bread, and Circuses

Folkloristic Essays on Science for the Masses

Gregory Schrempp

Utah State University Press, 2014

In Science, Bread, and Circuses, Gregory Schrempp brings a folkloristic viewpoint to the topic of popular science, calling attention to the persistence of folkloric form, idiom, and worldview within the increasingly important dimension of popular consciousness defined by the impact of science.

Schrempp considers specific examples of texts in which science interpreters employ folkloric tropes—myths, legends, epics, proverbs, spectacles, and a variety of gestures from religious tradition—to lend credibility and appeal to their messages. In each essay he explores an instance of science popularization rooted in the quotidian round: variations of proverb formulas in monumental measurements, invocations of science heroes like saints or other inspirational figures, the battle of mythos and logos in parenting and academe, how the meme has become embroiled in quasi-religious treatments of the problem of evil, and a range of other tropes of folklore drafted to serve the exposition of science.

Science, Bread, and Circuses places the relationship of science and folklore at the very center of folkloristic inquiry by exploring a range of attempts to rephrase and thus domesticate scientific findings and claims in folklorically imbued popular forms.

[more]

Staple Security

Bread and Wheat in Egypt

Jessica Barnes

Duke University Press, 2022

Egyptians often say that bread is life; most eat this staple multiple times a day, many relying on the cheap bread subsidized by the government. In Staple Security, Jessica Barnes explores the process of sourcing domestic and foreign wheat for the production of bread and its consumption across urban and rural settings. She traces the anxiety that pervades Egyptian society surrounding the possibility that the nation could run out of wheat or that people might not have enough good bread to eat, and the daily efforts to ensure that this does not happen. With rich ethnographic detail, she takes us into the worlds of cultivating wheat, trading grain, and baking, buying, and eating bread. Linking global flows of grain and a national bread subsidy program with everyday household practices, Barnes theorizes the nexus between food and security, drawing attention to staples and the lengths to which people go to secure their consistent availability and quality.

[more]