Described in the 2008Saveur 100 as "At the top of our bedside reading pile since its inception in 2001," the award-winningGastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture is a quarterly feast of truly exceptional writing on food. Designed both to entertain and to provokeThe Gastronomica Reader now offers a sumptuous sampling from the journal’s pages—including essays, poetry, interviews, memoirs, and an outstanding selection of the artwork that has madeGastronomica so distinctive. In words and images, it takes us around the globe, through time, and into a dazzling array of cultures, investigating topics from early hominid cooking to Third Reich caterers to the Shiite clergy under Ayatollah Khomeini who deemed Iranian caviar fit for consumption under Islamic law. Informed throughout by a keen sense of the pleasures of eating, tasting, and sharing foodThe Gastronomica Reader will inspire readers to think seriously, widely, and deeply about what goes onto their plates.

Gastronomica is a winner of theUtne Reader's Independent Press Award for Social/Cultural Coverage

Described in the 2008Saveur 100 as "At the top of our bedside reading pile since its inception in 2001," the award-winningGastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture is a quarterly feast of truly exceptional writing on food. Designed both to entertain and to provokeThe Gastronomica Reader now offers a sumptuous sampling from the journal’s pages—including essays, poetry, interviews, memoirs, and an outstanding selection of the artwork that has madeGastronomica so distinctive. In words and images, it takes us around the globe, through time, and into a dazzling array of cultures, investigating topics from early hominid cooking to Third Reich caterers to the Shiite clergy under Ayatollah Khomeini who deemed Iranian caviar fit for consumption under Islamic law. Informed throughout by a keen sense of the pleasures of eating, tasting, and sharing foodThe Gastronomica Reader will inspire readers to think seriously, widely, and deeply about what goes onto their plates.

Gastronomica is a winner of theUtne Reader's Independent Press Award for Social/Cultural Coverage

Contents
Editor’s Introduction 

appetites
Women Who Eat Dirt | Susan Allport 
Badlands: Portrait of a Competitive Eater | John O’Connor
“Don’t Eat That”: The Erotics of Abstinence in American Christianity | R. Marie Griffith 
A Shallot | Richard Wilbur

the family table
Delicacy | Paul Russell 
The Unbearable Lightness of Wartime Cuisine | A. Marin 
One Year and a Day: A Recipe for Gumbo and Mourning | James Nolan 
The Prize Inside | Toni Mirosevich 
Messages in a Bottle | Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 
dinner, 1933 | Charles Bukowski 

social constructs
Otto Horcher, Caterer to the Third Reich | Giles MacDonogh 
The Cooking Ape: An Interview with Richard Wrangham | Elisabeth Townsend 
How Caviar Turned Out to Be Halal | H. E. Chehabi 
“La grande bouffe”: Cooking Shows as Pornography | Andrew Chan 
Recipe for S&M Marmalade | Judith Pacht 

the art of food
Man Ray’s Electricité | Stefanie Spray Jandl 
Food + Clothing = | Robert Kushner 
Vik Muniz’s Ten Ten’s Weed Necklace | Vanessa Silberman 
Zhan Wang: Urban Landscape | John Stomberg 
The First Still Life | Lawrence Raab 

personal journeys
Waiting for a Cappuccino: A Brief Layover along the Spice Trail | Carolyn Thériault 
Include Me Out | Fred Chappell 
Evacuation Day, or A Foodie Is Bummed Out | Merry White 
Ripe Peach | Louise Glu¨ck 

how others eat
My McDonald’s | Constantin Boym 
Great Apes as Food | Dale Peterson 
The Bengali Bonti | Chitrita Banerji 
The Best “Chink” Food: Dog Eating and the Dilemma of Diversity | Frank H. Wu 

close to the earth
Organic in Mexico: A Conversation with Diana Kennedy | L. Peat O’Neil 
Mr. Clarence Jones, Carolina Rice Farmer | Jennie Ashlock 
“GM or Death”: Food and Choice in Zambia | Christopher M. Annear 
Wine, Place, and Identity in a Changing Climate | Robert Pincus 
Episode with a Potato | Eric Ormsby 

technologies
A Plea for Culinary Modernism: Why We Should Love New, Fast, Processed Food | Rachel Laudan 
The Patented Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich: Food as Intellectual Property | Anna M. Shih 
The Clockwork Roasting Jack, or How Technology Entered the Kitchen | Jeanne Schinto 
Grinding Away the Rust: The Legacy of Iceland’s Herring Oil and Meal Factories | Chris Bogan 

pleasures of the past
A la recherche de la tomate perdue: The First French Tomato Recipe? | Barbara Santich 
The Egg Cream Racket | Andrew Coe 
Frightening the Game | Charles Perry 
Alkermes: “A Liqueur of Prodigious Strength” | Amy Butler Greenfield 
Food for Thought | Eamon Grennan 

Acknowledgments 
Contributors 
Illustration Credits