An occasionally humorous, definitely informative look at what Americans eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all those...
How American food habits have changed over time.
In this entertaining investigation of the habits of American eaters, Egan, a director in the strategic initiatives group of the Culinary Institute of America, examines how eating habits have changed in the past 50-plus years. “At every step of my research,” she writes, “this is what I have found: We don’t put food first. We put three main values above all: work, freedom, and progress.” Those three factors have pushed us to be a nation that now spends more time eating at our workstations than ever before and have prompted an explosion in the snack food industry, as the fine line between a snack and meal gets increasingly blurry. Because Americans spend so much time at work, there’s little time or inclination to create a meal from scratch, which has aided the rise of pre-made meals that are easily reheated in the microwave. Fast-food restaurants now offer a plethora of dishes, while fast-casual restaurants put the emphasis on letting customers create their own meals from a variety of options. Low-fat, gluten-free, low-sugar, and other “diet” foods are all the rage as increasing numbers of Americans battle obesity and diabetes thanks to excessive food intake. The author analyzes a variety of topics, including the desire to drink more wine, eat more chicken wings, and binge on cheese. Egan studies the creation of “food holidays,” as well, days that revolve as much around food as the actual event (think Super Bowl), and novelty foods that combine sugar, salt, fat, and other ingredients into fantastic creations sure to entice us—e.g., Papa John’s Frito Chili Pizza. The author tells readers how and why these items have become part of America’s food culture and speculates on where American food habits will take us in the future.
An occasionally humorous, definitely informative look at what Americans eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all those snack times in between and how our eating habits are changing who we are.Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-239098-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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