Description

Mark Kurlansky’s new book takes us back to the food of a younger  America. Before the national highway system brought the country closer  together, before chain restaurants brought uniformity, and before the  Frigidaire meant that frozen food could be stored for longer, the  nation’s food was seasonal, regional, and traditional. It helped to form  the distinct character, attitudes, and customs of those who ate it.While Kurlansky was researching The Big Oyster in the Library of  Congress, he stumbled across the archives for the America Eats project  and discovered this wonderful window into our national past. In the  1930s, with the country gripped by the Great Depression and millions of  Americans struggling to get by, Franklin D. Roosevelt created the  Federal Writers’ Project under the New Deal to give work to artists and  writers, such as John Cheever and Richard Wright. A number of writers –  including Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Nelson Algren – were  dispatched all across America to chronicle the eating habits,  traditions, and struggles of local people. The project was abandoned in  the early 1940s and never completed.The Food of a Younger Nation unearths this forgotten literary and  historical treasure. Mark Kurlansky’s brilliant compilation of these  historic pieces, combined with authentic recipes, anecdotes, photos, and  his own musings and analysis, evokes a bygone era when Americans had  never heard of fast food and the grocery store was a thing of the  future.