Really excellent guide to changes in cuisine through history, and the forces that drove them. A useful antidote to the rose-tinted myth that the cooking of times gone by was so much better than the food we have now. Some people have described the book as too dry; I disagree. It is scholarly and informative, rather than the once-over-lightly so common in so many "factual" works.

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I became aware that I had finished this book after I read the last word, me, on the last page, although of course it wasn’t the actual physical last page, for there were three blank pages, blank, that is, except for the publisher’s web address on the actual, physical last page, a result of the print...

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It was, perhaps, the most inauspicious start to a TedTalk I’ve ever known. A shiny guy, wandering back and forth, telling the audience that soon they would be experiencing the top notes of a fragrance, Beyond Paradise, which had been split up by the perfumer who created it for Esteé Lauder into...

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I've seen some schlock in my time but never, ever have I sat through anything like the never-ending stream of western clichés that is Buffalo Girls with as much pleasure. There isn't a single stock scene or character missing, from the whore with (several) hearts of gold to the duplicitous schemin'...

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