A convincing argument and an appetizing look at a rarely discussed topic.
A rich compendium of history and lore tracing the evolution of food preservation.
Part popular history, part travel narrative, Shephard’s study explores the interesting question of how innovations in food preparation and preservation shaped civilization’s growth. Most of the chapters tackle preservative methods such as drying, salting, canning, and freezing, and highlight formative moments in their implementation. Shephard, who created several food programs for British television, presents chemical processes in layman’s terms while offering copious historical anecdotes designed to illustrate the importance of diet or food preservation as well as to engage a diverse readership. Those who assume Germany to be the originator of sauerkraut, for example, are quickly informed that builders of the Great Wall were fed on a diet of sauerkraut fermented in wine in sixth-century China. Similarly, in the chapter on salting we learn how Attila and the Huns sustained themselves by placing fresh cuts of meat beneath their saddles. As they rode, the combination of the horse’s sweat and the action of the rider pummeling the saddle removed the meat’s liquids, producing a nicely tenderized and preserved hunk of what Shephard calls “gallop-cured meat.” Perhaps just as impressive is the 19th-century tale of John Ross and the crew of the Victory, who survived for four and a half years in the Arctic on a store of tinned meat and vegetables, briefly supplemented by the Inuit diet of fox, salmon, and seal blubber. While the author succeeds in the daunting task of noting food types and preserving trends from around the globe, her British perspective occasionally skews the text; this is most noticeable in the virtual omission of France from a chapter on milk products and in the striking amount of space devoted to the creation of marmalade.
A convincing argument and an appetizing look at a rarely discussed topic.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-1633-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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