A remarkably toothsome and vastly informative gastronomic journey.
An exploration of the intimate intersection of food and illicit sexual desire.
“Good food held little importance at the tables of my childhood,” writes historian Cleves, who has since overcome those overlooked meal presentations to produce a rousing study of gastronomy and carnal appetite. The author has spent a decade making impressive use of historical archival information, scientific research experiments, blogs, films, books, ancient Chinese poetry, and modern multimedia to present a lush and fascinating chronicle of cuisine. Her text incorporates key discussions involving the Puritan hypothesis linking alimentary appetites with gluttony and illicit sexual behavior, the emerging restaurant industry in late-18th-century France (locales that were often favored by sex workers and adulterers), and how a preference for food became identity markers for bohemian and queer cultures and sexual outlaws of the late 19th and 20th centuries. She traces the interwoven legacy of the first French restaurant, its “sexual disreputability” upon arriving on U.S. shores, its association with sex work, the advent of the waitress, and the sexual aphrodisiac symbolism of “archetypal seduction food” like oysters, crawfish, partridges, eggs, tomatoes, beets, chocolate, and, naturally, strawberries. Cleves highlights reproving Puritan ministers and leaders, such as Seventh-Day Adventist Church founder and prophet Ellen White, who developed cautionary theories in the late 1800s about the correlation between “bad eating” and “sexual sin.” In that same era and beyond, bohemian culture emerged alongside a landslide of queer communities exhibiting a “passion for the table” and for gourmet cooking. Having spent time immersed in European culture, Cleves cleverly integrates a discussion on international epicureanism into the book’s second half, which celebrates the arrival of the “foodie” in the late 1900s, detaching the term from its former association with sexual immorality, and on how the term “food porn” became synonymous with eating with both the eyes and the mouth. While Cleves sadly attests that some of the stigmas surrounding cuisine and intimacy remain intact, food will always be, for many, an “instrument of seduction.”
A remarkably toothsome and vastly informative gastronomic journey.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9781509553631
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Polity
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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