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Works of Distinction, LDEI M.F.K. Fisher Prize for Excellence in Culinary Media Content, 2022

A rare woman’s-eye-view of working in the professional French kitchen

Though women enter France’s culinary professions at higher rates than ever, men still receive the lion’s share of the major awards and Michelin stars. Rachel E. Black looks at the experiences of women in Lyon to examine issues of gender inequality in France’s culinary industry. Known for its female-led kitchens, Lyon provides a unique setting for understanding the gender divide, as Lyonnais women have played a major role in maintaining the city’s culinary heritage and its status as a center for innovation. Voices from history combine with present-day interviews and participant observation to reveal the strategies women use to navigate male-dominated workplaces or, in many cases, avoid men in kitchens altogether. Black also charts how constraints imposed by French culture minimize the impact of #MeToo and other reform-minded movements. 

Evocative and original, Cheffes de Cuisine celebrates the successes of women inside the professional French kitchen and reveals the obstacles women face in the culinary industry and other male-dominated professions.

Back when SOS or Adam and Eve on a raft were things to order if you were hungry but a little short on time and money, nearly one-fourth of all waitresses belonged to unions. By the time their movement peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, the women had developed a distinctive form of working-class feminism, simultaneously pushing for equal rights and pay and affirming their need for special protections.

Dorothy Sue Cobble shows how sexual and racial segregation persisted in wait work, but she rejects the idea that this was caused by employers' actions or the exclusionary policies of male trade unionists. Dishing It Out contends that the success of waitress unionism was due to several factors: waitresses, for the most part, had nontraditional family backgrounds, and most were primary wage-earners. Their close-knit occupational community and sex-separate union encouraged female assertiveness and a decidedly unromantic view of men and marriage. Cobble skillfully combines oral interviews and extensive archival records to show how waitresses adopted the basic tenets of male-dominated craft unions but rejected other aspects of male union culture. The result is a book that will expand our understanding of feminism and unionism by including the gender conscious perspectives of working women.

In Local Vino, James R. Pennell tracks among the hardy vines and heartland terroir of wineries across Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio. Blending history and observation, Pennell gives us a top-down view of the business from cuttings and cultivation to sales and marketing. He also invites entrepreneurs to share stories of their ambitions, hard work, and strategies. Together, author and subjects trace the hows and whys of progress toward that noblest of goals: a great vintage that puts their winery on the map.

A richly illustrated history of the flour factories that transformed the milling industry worldwide—and forever changed the culture and architecture of Minneapolis

Among the most consequential advances of the Industrial Revolution was the invention of the modern roller mill, which sent the traditional millstone into obsolescence and fundamentally changed the production of a key ingredient to feeding the world. The culture and landscape of its hometown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, was altered as well, and Making Mill City tells the story of how revolutionary technologies originating at St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River put Minneapolis on the map and cemented its global status as “Mill City.”

With deep historical detail and abundant illustrations, Robert M. Frame III charts the dramatic transformation of Minneapolis milling—and urban life—between the early 1870s and 1920s. Two machines propelled this change: the middlings purifier and the modern roller mill. Enabling millers to grind hard Upper Midwestern spring wheat, these innovations gave rise to the “mammoth mills” and ever-expanding flour factories that would soon dominate the Minneapolis riverfront. Prominent entrepreneurs like those who gave their names to the Washburn and Pillsbury A Mills were significant, but Frame foregrounds the crucial roles of the millers, millwrights, and engineers who designed and equipped the massive new factories, as well as the editor of the legendary weekly trade publication Northwestern Miller, to paint a picture of the vibrant and diverse culture that grew around this industrial phenomenon.

A rich narrative describing how Minneapolis became the largest producer and exporter of wheat flour for more than fifty years, Making Mill City captures a critical chapter in the history of the city. Art and architecture inspired by mills and millers stand today as National Historic Landmarks, and the development and success of the current thriving metropolis have strong foundations in its milling history.

The story of how today’s dairy farmers are navigating a historic crossroads of agriculture and rural life in a rapidly changing world.
For generations, the dairy farmer has embodied the character, resilience, and values of the Midwest. Yet between 2005 and 2020, Wisconsin—known as America’s Dairyland—lost half of its dairy farms, marking one of the most profound economic and cultural transformations in its history. In Milk Shake: Abundance and Loss in America’s Dairyland, journalist Garbo Wedde delivers a thorough and emotionally resonant portrait of the farm families living through this time of change in rural life.
Drawing on extensive research and candid conversations with dozens of dairy farmers and industry stakeholders, Wedde looks beyond statistics to reveal the human stories behind the decline of the small family dairy farm. At the heart of the book are four Wisconsin farm families grappling with an uncertain future and how to respond: one leaves the industry, one embraces automation, one finds hope in a new generation willing to carry on the work, and one faces mounting financial strain that culminates in tragedy.
Interwoven among these narratives is a penetrating examination of the rise of large-scale industrial farms, their economic and environmental impacts, and the ways communities are responding. Wedde also explores the political, economic, demographic, and cultural forces reshaping dairy farming, from environmental regulation and labor shortages to gerrymandering, changing consumer preferences, and growing consolidation of small farms into agribusiness.
Richly observed scenes—from dairy breakfasts and farm auctions to public hearings on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—bring readers inside a world that is both quintessentially American and increasingly endangered. Part social history and part elegy, Milk Shake captures a pivotal moment in America’s Dairyland while exploring questions that reach far beyond Wisconsin: What is lost when family farms disappear, and what does that loss mean for the communities, traditions, and values they sustain?

Neoliberals often point to improvements in public health and nutrition as examples of globalisation's success, but this book argues that the corporate food and medicine industries are destroying environments and ruining living conditions across the world.

Scientist Stan Cox expertly draws out the strong link between Western big business and environmental destruction. This is a shocking account of the huge damage that drug manufacturers and large food corporations are inflicting on the health of people and crops worldwide. Companies discussed include Wal-Mart, GlaxoSmithKline, Tyson Foods and Monsanto. On issues ranging from the poisoning of water supplies in South Asia to natural gas depletion and how it threatens global food supplies, Cox shows how the demand for profits is always put above the public interest.

While individual efforts to "shop for a better world" and conserve energy are laudable, Cox explains that they need to be accompanied by an economic system that is grounded in ecological sustainability if we are to find a cure for our Sick Planet.

The Slow Food movement was set up in Italy as a response to the dominance of fast food chains, supermarkets and large-scale agribusiness. It seeks to defend what it calls 'the universal right to pleasure' and promotes an alternative approach to food production and consumption based on the promotion of 'good, clean and fair' local products.

This is the first in-depth study of the fascinating politics of Slow Food, which in twenty years has grown into an international organisation with more than 80,000 members in over 100 countries. With its roots in the 1960s and 1970s counter-culture, Slow Food's distinctive politics lie in the unity between gastronomic pleasure and environmental responsibility. The movement crosses the left-right divide to embrace both the conservative desire to preserve traditional rural communities and an alternative 'virtuous' idea of globalisation.

Geoff Andrews shows that the alternative future embodied in Slow Food extends to all aspects of modern life. The Slow Food Story presents an extensive new critique of fast-moving, work-obsessed contemporary capitalist culture.