The Rituals of Dinner

Author: Margaret Visser
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504011694
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book: A renowned scholar explores the way we eat across cultures and throughout history. From the wild parties of ancient Greece to the strictures of an Upper East Side meal to the ritualistic feasts of cannibals, Margaret Visser takes us on a fascinating journey through the diverse practices, customs, and taboos that define how and why we prepare and consume food the way we do. With keen insights into small details we take for granted, such as the origins of forks and chopsticks or why tablecloths exist, and examinations of broader issues like the economic implications of dining etiquette, Visser scrutinizes table manners across eras and oceans, offering an intimate new understanding of eating both as a biological necessity and a cultural phenomenon. Witty and impeccably researched, The Rituals of Dinner is a captivating blend of folklore, sociology, history, and humor. In the words of the New York Times Book Review, “Read it, because you’ll never look at a table knife the same way again.”

Cod

Author: Mark Kurlansky
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307369803
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been spurred by it, national diets have been based on it, economies have depended on it, and the settlement of North America was driven by it. Cod, it turns out, is the reason Europeans set sail across the Atlantic, and it is the only reason they could. What did the Vikings eat in icy Greenland and on the five expeditions to America recorded in the Icelandic sagas? Cod -- frozen and dried in the frosty air, then broken into pieces and eaten like hardtack. What was the staple of the medieval diet? Cod again, sold salted by the Basques, an enigmatic people with a mysterious, unlimited supply of cod. Cod is a charming tour of history with all its economic forces laid bare and a fish story embellished with great gastronomic detail. It is also a tragic tale of environmental failure, of depleted fishing stocks where once the cod's numbers were legendary. In this deceptively whimsical biography of a fish, Mark Kurlansky brings a thousand years of human civilization into captivating focus.

The Land Of The Leal

Author: James Barke
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1847675190
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 635

Book Description
This huge novel, closer in scope to a Russian epic than to any English counterpart, opens at the turn of the century in the extreme poverty of the Rhinns of Galloway, an agricultural backwater of the southern-most part of Scotland. With a loving regard for the land and its people, Barke traces the lives of David and Jean Ramsay who, full of hope, painstakingly uproot themselves and their family in the search for prosperity. Their efforts to retain respect and a decent way of life are thwarted by unemployment in increasingly hostile circumstances, and a harsh environment inevitably leaves its mark. But a new generation emerges to question the authority of an uncaring society and, even as Fascism rages through Europe, a new hope is born. ‘Barke’s characters are both intelligent and spirited.’ Times Literary Supplement ‘An elegy for the old way of life.’ New Statesman

Salt

Author: Mark Kurlansky
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 030736979X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490

Book Description
From the award-winning and bestselling author of Cod comes the dramatic, human story of a simple substance, an element almost as vital as water, that has created fortunes, provoked revolutions, directed economies and enlivened our recipes. Salt is common, easy to obtain and inexpensive. It is the stuff of kitchens and cooking. Yet trade routes were established, alliances built and empires secured – all for something that filled the oceans, bubbled up from springs, formed crusts in lake beds, and thickly veined a large part of the Earth’s rock fairly close to the surface. From pre-history until just a century ago – when the mysteries of salt were revealed by modern chemistry and geology – no one knew that salt was virtually everywhere. Accordingly, it was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history. Even today, salt is a major industry. Canada, Kurlansky tells us, is the world’s sixth largest salt producer, with salt works in Ontario playing a major role in satisfying the Americans’ insatiable demand. As he did in his highly acclaimed Cod, Mark Kurlansky once again illuminates the big picture by focusing on one seemingly modest detail. In the process, the world is revealed as never before.

Chronicles of the Canongate

Author: Sir Walter Scott
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140439892
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 486

Book Description
Set within a framing narrative told by Chrystal Croftangry, these three stories are set in the years following the Jacobite defeat and all feature characters who are leaving Scotland to seek their fortunes elsewhere. In 'The Highland Widow' and 'The Two Drovers', two young men find themselves torn between traditional Scottish loyalties and the opportunities offered by England. And 'The Surgeon's Daughter' follows three young Scots to India during the first phase years of the British Empire.

Two Worlds

Author: David Daiches
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1847675247
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Foreword by David Daiches with an additional essay, ‘Promised Lands’. In this captivating autobiography of his childhood and student years David Daiches recalls a unique period between the two world wars. There was something very special about the Scottish-Jewish interchange in those years. It has had its counterparts in other cultures yet few have been captured so vividly or with such insight peculiar to the very young. Daiches was one of the sons of Edinburgh’s chief Rabbi. In their home, a quiet dark hub of foreign faith, memories of light and festivity predominated. Illustrious visitors from every corner of the globe would call on the distinguished Rabbi and the sons of the house would argue cheerfully with these itinerant scholars and diplomats. School was Scottish, Presbyterian, with its characteristics smell of wood, chalk, ink and schoolbag leather. Daiches did not play games, sing hymns, wear the ubiquitous school shorts or socialise after school yet not only did he survive these tribulations, he excelled. ‘The two cultures of my childhood . . . I was equally at home in both. That was my good fortune and I have never ceased to be grateful for it.’ ‘Promised Lands’ is a moving memoir of the author’s father and a timely meditation on exile, pluralism and synthesis, and on the need to welcome and also to balance the vital cultural differences which show us what we are and how we all belong to the imagined community of Scotland.

The Watcher by the Threshold

Author: John Buchan
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1847675727
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 451

Book Description
Edited and introduced by Andrew Lownie. ‘The short story is the real form’ John Buchan This is the first ever complete collection of all Buchan’s shorter Scottish fiction. Set largely in his beloved Borders, these stories and novellas show the full range and depth of Buchan’s writing. Featuring shepherds, poachers, gamekeepers and drovers, they are worlds away from the tales of aristocratic adventure with which he is so often associated. Shot through with characters and places he returned to in his full-length fiction, the Buchan that emerges from this collection is a very different and much more complex writer than he is often held to be. ‘John Buchan was the first to realise the enormous dramatic value of adventure in familiar surroundings happening to unadventurous men.’ Graham Greene

Feminine Enlightenment

Author: DeLucia JoEllen DeLucia
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 147440426X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
Revises established understandings of British women writers' contributions to Enlightenment narratives of social and historical progress Drawing on original archival research, A Feminine Enlightenment argues that women writers shaped Enlightenment conversations regarding the role of sentiment and gender in the civilizing process. By reading women's literature alongside history and philosophy and moving between the eighteenth century and Romantic era, JoEllen DeLucia challenges conventional historical and generic boundaries. Beginning with Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), she tracks discussions of "e;women's progress"e; from the rarified atmosphere of mid-eighteenth-century Bluestocking salons and the masculine domain of the Scottish university system to the popular Minerva Press novels of the early nineteenth century. Ultimately, this study positions feminine genres such as the Gothic romance and Bluestocking poetry, usually seen as outliers in a masculine Age of Reason, as essential to understanding emotion's role in Enlightenment narratives of progress. The effect of this study is twofold: to show how developments in women's literature reflected and engaged with Enlightenment discussions of emotion, sentiment, and commercial and imperial expansion; and to provide new literary and historical contexts for contemporary conversations that continue to use "e;women's progress"e; to assign cultures and societies around the globe a place in universalizing schemas of development.Key FeaturesEstablishes the centrality of gender to Enlightenment discussions of social and historical development Uncovers evidence of women writers' participation in the Scottish Enlightenment's theorization of sentiment and historical progressProvides literary and historical background for ongoing discussions of the history of emotion and the study of affect

Modern Scottish Gaelic Poems

Author: Donald Macaulay
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1847675670
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Introduced by Donald MacAulay. This indispensable anthology contains selections of the best work by Scotland’s most acclaimed modern Gaelic poets: Sorley Maclean, George Campbell Hay, Iain Crichton Smith, Derick Thomson and Donald MacAulay. Designed as much for English readers of Gaelic, the poems are presented with line-for-line translations. These translations have been made by the poets themselves, thereby maximising the retention of the sprit and form of the originals. Donald MacAulay is Professor of Celtic at the University of Glasgow. ‘This is the ideal collection for those who wish to enjoy Gaelic poetry without learning the language.’ Birmingham Post ‘This book deserves to be read not only to gain an insight into modern Gaelic poetry, but because it contains poetry of merit that is now available in English.’ Press and Journal ‘Nua-Bhardachd Ghaidhlig breathes the very soul of Gaelic Scotland. It is an anthology of the first importance.’ Books Ireland

Dining On Turtles

Author: D. Kirkby
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230597300
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Book Description
As gentlemen of the Royal Society in London sat down to their turtle dinner in 1793 they were participating in an historical event: an act simultaneously of fine dining and colonialism. Feasting and drinking, the communities in which they occurred, and larger themes of historical significance are explored here offering new insights into the past.