The single most influential culinary trend of our time is fast food.  It has spawned an industry that has changed eating, the most fundamental of human activities. From the first flipping of burgers in tiny shacks in the western United States to the forging of neon signs that spell out “Pizza Hut” in Cyrillic or Arabic scripts, the fast food industry has exploded into dominance, becoming one of the leading examples of global corporate success. And with this success it has become one of the largest targets of political criticism, blamed for widespread obesity, cultural erasure, oppressive labor practices, and environmental destruction on massive scales.
           
In this book, expert culinary historian Andrew F. Smith explores why the fast food industry has been so successful and examines the myriad ethical lines it has crossed to become so. As he shows, fast food—plain and simple—devised a perfect retail model, one that works everywhere, providing highly flavored calories with speed, economy, and convenience. But there is no such thing as a free lunch, they say, and the costs with fast food have been enormous: an assault on proper nutrition, a minimum-wage labor standard, and a powerful pressure on farmers and ranchers to deploy some of the worst agricultural practices in history. As Smith shows, we have long known about these problems, and the fast food industry for nearly all of its existence has been beset with scathing exposés, boycotts, protests, and government interventions, which it has sometimes met with real changes but more often with token gestures, blame-passing, and an unrelenting gauntlet of lawyers and lobbyists. 

Fast Food ultimately looks at food as a business, an examination of the industry’s options and those of consumers, and a serious inquiry into what society can do to ameliorate the problems this cheap and tasty product has created. 

It’s no surprise that sugar has been on our minds for millennia. First cultivated in New Guinea around 8,000 B.C.E., this addictive sweetener has since come to dominate our appetites—whether in candy, desserts, soft drinks, or even pasta sauces—for better and for worse. In this book, Andrew F. Smith offers a fascinating history of this simultaneously beloved and reviled ingredient, holding its incredible value as a global commodity up against its darker legacies of slavery and widespread obesity.
           
As Smith demonstrates, sugar’s past is chockfull of determined adventurers: relentless sugar barons and plantation owners who worked alongside plant breeders, food processors, distributors, and politicians to build a business based on our cravings. Exploring both the sugarcane and sugar beet industries, he tells story after story of those who have made fortunes and those who have met demise all because of sugar’s simple but profound hold on our palates. Delightful and surprisingly action-packed, this book offers a layered and definitive tale of sugar and the many people who have been caught in its spell—from barons to slaves, from chefs to the countless among us born with that insatiable devil, the sweet tooth.     

From the Americas to Australasia, from northern Europe to southern Africa, the tomato tickles the world's taste buds. Americans along devour more than twelve million tons annually of this peculiar fruit, variously considered poisonous, curative, and aphrodisiacal.
 
In this first concerted study of the tomato in America, Andrew F. Smith separates myth from historical fact, beginning with the Salem, New Jersey, man who, in 1820, allegedly attracted spectators from hundreds of miles to watch him eat a tomato on the courthouse steps (the legend says they expected to see him die a painful death). Later, hucksters such as Dr. John Cook Bennett and the Amazing Archibald Miles peddled the tomato's purported medicinal benefits. The competition was so fierce that the Tomato Pill War broke out in 1838.
 
The Tomato in America traces the early cultivation of the tomato, its infiltration of American cooking practices, the early manufacture of preserved tomatoes and ketchup (soon hailed as "the national condiment of the United States"), and the "great tomato mania" of the 1820s and 1830s. The book also includes tomato recipes from the pre-Civil War period, covering everything from sauces, soups, and main dishes to desserts and sweets.
 
Now available for the first time in paperback, The Tomato in America provides a piquant and entertaining look at a versatile and storied figure in culinary history.
 
 

“Talking turkey” about the bird you thought you knew

Fondly remembered as the centerpiece of family Thanksgiving reunions, the turkey is a cultural symbol as well as a multi-billion dollar industry. As a bird, dinner, commodity, and as a national icon, the turkey has become as American as the bald eagle (with which it actually competed for supremacy on national insignias).

Food historian Andrew F. Smith’s sweeping and multifaceted history of Meleagris gallopavo separates fact from fiction, serving as both a solid historical reference and a fascinating general read. With his characteristic wit and insatiable curiosity, Smith presents the turkey in ten courses, beginning with the bird itself (actually several different species of turkey) flying through the wild. The Turkey subsequently includes discussions of practically every aspect of the iconic bird, including the wild turkey in early America, how it came to be called “turkey,” domestication, turkey mating habits, expansion into Europe, stuffing, conditions in modern industrial turkey factories, its surprising commercial history of boom and bust, and its eventual ascension to holiday mainstay.  

As one of the easiest of foods to cook, the turkey’s culinary possibilities have been widely explored if little noted.  The second half of the book collects an amazing array of over one hundred historical and modern turkey recipes from across America and Europe.  From sandwiches to salmagundi, you’ll find detailed instructions on nearly every variation on the turkey. Historians will enjoy a look back at the varied appetites of their ancestors and seasoned cooks will have an opportunity to reintroduce a familiar food in forgotten ways.