Barbara Haber, one of America's most respected authorities on the history
of food, has spent years excavating fascinating stories of the ways in which
meals cooked and served by women have shaped American history. As any cook
knows, every meal, and every diet, has a story -- whether it relates to
presidents and first ladies or to the poorest of urban immigrants. From
Hardtack to Home Fries brings together the best and most inspiring of
those stories, from the 1840s to the present, focusing on a remarkable
assembly of little-known or forgotten Americans who determined what our
country ate during some of its most trying periods.
Haber's secret weapon is the cookbook. She unearths cookbooks and menus
from rich and poor, urban and rural, long-past and near-present and uses
them to answer some fascinating puzzles:
• Why was the food in Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's White House so
famously bad? Were they trying to keep guests away, or did they themselves
simply lack the taste to realize the truth? It turns out that Eleanor's chef
wrote a cookbook, which solves the mystery.
• How did food lure settlers to the hardship of the American West?
Englishman Fred Harvey's Harvey Girls tempted them with good food and good
women.
• How did cooking keep alive World War II Army and Navy POWs in the
Pacific? A remarkable cookbook reveals how recollections of home cooking and
cooking resourcefulness helped mend bodies and spirits.
From Hardtack to Home Fries uses a light touch to survey a deeply
important subject. Women's work and women's roles in America's past have not
always been easy to recover. Barbara Haber shows us that a single,
ubiquitous, ordinary-yet-extraordinary lens can illuminate a great deal of
this other half of our past. Haber includes sample recipes and rich
photographs, bringing the food of bygone eras back to life.
From Hardtack to Home Fries is a feast, and a delight.