books @ cc.

What the All-American Meal is Doing to the World
by Eric Schlosser (2001)

A well-researched and very readable example of popular journalism on a topic that has attracted increasing concerns and antagonism. By now an average person would at least have a vague rancour for its nutritionally-empty, junk calories if not for its “McAmericanism”. But what really lurks behind those buns, the high school kids behind the counters, the slaughterhouse, the laboratories that manufacture the globally uniform smell of those “barbecued meat patty”? This book tells the history of fast-food industry and its impacts on social and cultural landscape.

by Sophie D. Coe, Michael D. Coe (2003)

Generously accompanied with 97 illustrations (13 in colour), the book examines the origin of the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao, “food of the gods”), its history and sociological importance/pervasiveness from its first domestication by the Olmec, the more colourful widespread combinations of chocolate (e.g. with chilli, vegetables, meat, pasta) and finally its familiar present-day uses brought about by mass production and its recent luxurious status revival.

Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe
by Piero Camporesi (1989)

Divided into 19 chapters, Bread of Dreams is an account on how (as summarized by the jacket) “many people in early modern Europe lived in a state of almost permanent hallucination, drugged by their hunger or by bread adulterated with hallucinogenic herbs.”