A blend of personal reminiscence and historical insight seasons a history of Africa through its food, from the antelope of the Bushmen to the pastries of the Cape Colonists.

Precious Cargo tells the fascinating story of how western hemisphere foods conquered the globe and saved it from not only mass starvation, but culinary as well. Focusing heavily American foods—specifically the lowly crops that became commodities, plus one gobbling protein source, the turkey—Dewitt describes how these foreign and often suspect temptations were transported around the world, transforming cuisines and the very fabric of life on the planet. Organized thematically by foodstuff, Precious Cargo delves into the botany, zoology and anthropology connected to new world foods, often uncovering those surprising individuals who were responsible for their spread and influence, including same traders, brutish conquerors, a Scottish millionaire obsessed with a single fruit and a British lord and colonial governor with a passion for peppers, to name a few. Precious Cargo is a must read for foodies and historians alike.

This gastrological romp shares tales of gustatory tidbits from six continents. Weaving history and autobiography, author Jerry Hopkins regales with an array of startling facts about the world's eating habits. Strange Foods begins with rat tales from the Roman Empire and imperial China and continues on to stories form locales where rat remains a mouth-watering hors d'oeuvre or hearty entrée today. There are at least 40 serving suggestions for crocodile alone! And there are more than 250 photographs from acclaimed photographer Michael Freeman, whose aim is true and who eats what he shoots. This is gonzo food writing that's sure to change your mind, if not your palate.

Alabama’s history and culture revealed through fourteen iconic foods, dishes, and beverages The Story of Alabama in Fourteen Foods explores well-known Alabama food traditions to reveal salient histories of the state in a new way. In this book that is part history, part travelogue, and part cookbook, Emily Blejwas pays homage to fourteen emblematic foods, dishes, and beverages, one per chapter, as a lens for exploring the diverse cultures and traditions of the state. Throughout Alabama’s history, food traditions have been fundamental to its customs, cultures, regions, social and political movements, and events. Each featured food is deeply rooted in Alabama identity and has a story with both local and national resonance. Blejwas focuses on lesser-known food stories from around the state, illuminating the lives of a diverse populace: Poarch Creeks, Creoles of color, wild turkey hunters, civil rights activists, Alabama club women, frontier squatters, Mardi Gras revelers, sharecroppers, and Vietnamese American shrimpers, among others. A number of Alabama figures noted for their special contributions to the state’s foodways, such as George Washington Carver and Georgia Gilmore, are profiled as well. Alabama’s rich food history also unfolds through accounts of community events and a food-based economy. Highlights include Sumter County barbecue clubs, Mobile’s banana docks, Appalachian Decoration Days, cane syrup making, peanut boils, and eggnog parties. Drawing on historical research and interviews with home cooks, chefs, and community members cooking at local gatherings and for holidays, Blejwas details the myths, legends, and truths underlying Alabama’s beloved foodways. With nearly fifty color illustrations and fifteen recipes, The Story of Alabama in Fourteen Foods will allow all Alabamians to more fully understand their shared cultural heritage.

Sir Laurens van der Post, author, film-maker, storyteller of world-wide renown, soldier, prisoner of war, political advisor to heads of state, humanitarian, explorer, conservationist... the list goes on and on. His extraordinary curiosity, his love for the small and the great, and his tremendous feeling and concern for his surroundings and all that they included, set him travelling the lands and the waters of the world, a messenger in search of meaning. He touched and inspired many along the way, some of whom are to be found in the pages of this book. A true man of his time, Sir Laurens was born in 1906 in the interior of South Africa, served in the British forces during World War II, including three-and-a-half years in Japanese captivity, and lived and worked since that time in London, where he died just after celebrating his 90th birthday in December, 1996. 'The Rock Rabbit and The Rainbow' was originally conceived as a Festschrift, or gift collection of writings, for Sir Laurens by several of his friends and then evolved into its present form, which includes numerous original contributions by Sir Laurens himself.

Flamingo Feather, which Laurens van der Post dedicated to the 'fast vanishing Africa' of his boyhood, is a story of adventure - adventure unfolded in the great tradition of story-telling. It is the tale of two white hunters - one old, experienced and wise, one young and resolute - who suspect that something evil is being prepared on a vast scale in their country and who, with little to guide them, set out to track down its source. In the unfolding of their story, the immense scene of bush, forest, jungle, lake and mountain, the untamed wildlife and vivid animal beings, and the background mind and culture of the indigenous people in all their archaic reality, are evoked as never before. Indeed so deeply does the story draw on Laurens van der Post's knowledge of the country, so directly does it touch on vital elements in African life, that it carries the conviction of an authentic personal experience. Africa itself lies at the heart of the story, Africa as it has been and as it may yet become.

A lively, informal history of over three centuries of southern hospitality and cuisine, Eating, Drinking, and Visiting in the South traces regional gastronomy from the sparse diet of Jamestown settlers, who learned from necessity to eat what the Indians ate, to the lavish corporate cocktail parties of the New South. Brimming with memorable detail, this book by Joe Gray Taylor ranges from the groaning plates of the great plantations, witnessed by Frederick Law Olmsted and a great many others, to the less-than-appetizing extreme guests often confronted in the South's nineteenth-century inns and taverns: "execrable coffee, rancid butter, and very dubious meat." Taylor describes the diet of the early pioneers, with its corn bread, beaver-tail soup, and black bear meat, and the creation of the South's regional cuisines, including Kentucky's burgoo and south Louisiana's gumbo. He tells of the rounds of visitation that were the social lifeblood of the Old South, of the fatback and hoecake that fed plantation slaves, and of the starvation diet of the Confederate soldier and civilian. Taylor then looks at how technological advances and urbanization have in some cases enhanced, but more often diluted, the southern eating experience, and he finds that despite the introduction of fast-food "abominations" and factory-made horrors such as quick grits and canned biscuits, the region's sturdy eating, drinking, and social traditions still flourish in many byways and on some main avenues of the modern South. In a new introduction, noted food writer John Egerton looks at what motivated Joe Gray Taylor to undertake this fine study and discusses how southern food studies have progressed since the book was first released.