New Books in Food

Irish vegan studies are poised for increasing relevance as climate change threatens the legitimacy and longevity of animal agriculture and widespread health problems related to animal product consumption disrupt long held nutritional ideologies. Already a top producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union, Ireland has committed to expanding animal agriculture despite impending crisis. The nexus of climate change, public health, and animal welfare present a challenge to the hegemony of the Irish state and neoliberal European governance. Efforts to resist animal rights and environmentalism highlight the struggle to sustain economic structures of inequality in a society caught between a colonialist past and a globalized future. Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony (SUNY Press, 2021) explores the vegan Irish epistemology, one that can be traced along its history of animism, agrarianism, ascendency, adaptation, and activism. From its zoomorphic pagan roots to its legacy of vegetarianism, Ireland has been more receptive to the interests of other animals than is currently acknowledged. More than a land of "meat" and potatoes, Ireland is a relevant, if overlooked, contributor to Western vegan thought.Corey Lee Wrenn is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. She is the author of several books, including A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press, 2019). Kyle Johannsen is a philosophy instructor at Trent University and Wilfrid Laurier University. His most recent book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Jewish Flavours of Italy: A Family Cookbook (Green Bean Books, 2022) is a culinary journey through Italy and a deep dive into family culinary heritage. With more than 100 kosher recipes, Silvia offers readers a unique collection of authentic and traditional Italian-Jewish dishes, combined with stunning photography, practical tips, and clear explanations. With a delicious mix of recipes, family stories and history, Silvia offers a unique insight into centuries' old culinary traditions.Discover recipes from everyday home-cooked meals to special celebration menus for Jewish holidays. Highlights include recipes such as pasta e fagioli (borlotti bean soup), family favorites such as melanzane alla parmigiana (eggplant parmigiana), as well as delicious Jewish dishes such as Carciofi alla Giudia (Jewish-style fried artichokes), challah bread, and sarde in saor (Venetian sweet and sour sardines).Silvia's extensive cooking repertoire combined with her life experiences means that her recipes and family stories are one-of-a-kind. She introduces the reader to soup, pasta, matzah, and risotto dishes, then moves on to meat, poultry, fish, and vegetable recipes. Silvia finishes with mouth-watering desserts such as orecchie di Amman (Haman's ears), Roman Jewish pizza ebraica (nut and candied fruit cakes) and sefra (aromatic semolina bake). Even the most sweet-toothed readers will be satisfied!Each recipe is introduced by Silvia in a friendly and conversational tone that will get readers involved before they even get the chance to preheat the oven. Throughout the book, in-depth features highlight ingredients such as artichokes, zucchini flowers and eggplants. A personal touch shines through and provides a connection with the author. Silvia's enthusiastic and charming personality transforms this collection of recipes into a culinary experience that will be cherished by generations to come. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

In Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction (U California Press, 2022), historian Helen Anne Curry investigates more than a hundred years of agriculture and conservation practices to understand the tasks that farmers and researchers have considered essential to maintaining crop diversity. Through the contours of efforts to preserve diversity in one of the world's most important crops, Curry reveals how those who sought to protect native, traditional, and heritage crops forged their methods around the expectation that social, political, and economic transformations would eliminate diverse communities and cultures. In this fascinating study of how cultural narratives shape science, Curry argues for new understandings of endangerment and alternative strategies to protect and preserve crop diversity.Isobel Akerman is a History PhD student at the University of Cambridge studying biodiversity and botanic gardens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

How do farmers struggle for land and democracy in Myanmar’s hybrid political system? How might a feminist approach to this question look like and enable novel findings? In which ways can researchers make the most of ethnographic methods to understand ordinary people’s survival strategies? And do experiences from rural Myanmar reflect the wider changing landscape of development in the Global South? In this episode, Dr. Hilary Faxon, a Marie Curie Fellow in the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen, joins Dr. Mai Van Tran, a postdoc at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, to discuss her upcoming book on grassroots struggles over land, based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Myanmar.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dkTranscripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

In Fish, Milk, Tamarind: A Book of Egyptian Arabic Food Expressions (American University in Cairo Press, 2022), Dalal Abo El Seoud presents 100 commonly used Egyptian food expressions. Can you guess what Egyptians mean when they say that something is "a peeled banana" or that someone is "sleeping in honey" or has "turned the sea to tahini"? You may find the answers quite unexpected when you open the pages of this delightful giftbook featuring some one hundred popular food-inflected phrases and sayings used by native speakers of Egyptian Arabic. Idiomatic expressions lend color, dynamism, and humor to everyday speech, and convey complex ideas and beliefs with an economy of words that also tell us something about the culture from which they spring. Each expression in Fish, Milk, Tamarind is given in Arabic script and English transliteration followed by its literal and intended meanings, while humorous color illustrations throughout help readers visualize and remember the expressions. Learners and native speakers of Arabic, as well as Egypt enthusiasts and language lovers will find much in this book to teach, entertain, and enthrall them.Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Cannibalism has been used for centuries to define the lowest form of humanity, but the story isn't as straightforward as it may seem. Turns out, there may be a logic - or even a love - to eating people.Guests Emily Anderson, Curator of “Cannibalism: Myth & Reality” Bill Schutt, Author of Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Contemporary diet culture is only the latest manifestation of a long history of religious fervor about food.Guests Isabel Foxen Duke, health coach Alan Levinovitz, Professor of Religious Studies at James Madison University Corrie Norman, Associate Director, Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Every year before the holiday of Sukkot, Jews all around the world purchase an etrog―a lemon-like fruit―to participate in the holiday ritual. In Etrog: How A Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol (Palgrave Pivot, 2018), David Z. Moster tracks the etrog from its evolutionary home in Yunnan, China, to the lands of India, Iran, and finally Israel, where it became integral to the Jewish celebration of Sukkot.Matthew Miller is a graduate of Yeshivat Yesodei HaTorah. He studied Jewish Studies and Linguistics at McGill for his BA and completed an MA in Hebrew Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. He works with Jewish organizations in media and content distribution, such as TheHabura.com and RabbiEfremGoldberg.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

"Uncle Aron's compliments, which hadn't changed since the days of the Bible, didn't sound so great. One time, he told my mother that she was 'awesome like an army with flags.' Another time, he informed her that 'your nose is like the tower of Lebanon."Meet the village it took to raise Gil Hovav - colorful aunts and uncles hailing from one of the most respected lineages in the Jewish world (Hovav is the great-grandson of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the reviver of the Hebrew language). This book includes twenty-two funny and heart-warming stories awash with love and longing for the people who raised one skinny and cross-eyed Jerusalemite boy to love poor-man's food, to love proper Hebrew and, most importantly, to love people.Candies from Heaven (Green Bean Books, 2023) is dished up with more than twenty delicious family recipes with the seal of approval from Gil Hovav, the man who has played a major role in the remaking of Israeli cuisine and the transformation of Israel from a country of basic traditional foods into a "gourmet nation". Readers get to chuckle at Hovav's amusing recollections and salivate over his family recipes for sweet sour chorba tomato soup and his Aunt Levana's eggplant and feta bourekas. If you've ever wondered how to make hilbeh or slow-cooked eggs (or if you're simply itching to expand your culinary repertoire), this book is for you.As wholesome and warming as a homecooked meal, Candies from Heaven will appeal to anyone who treasures good food and relationships built on love. Dig in, dear readers, pleasure is served. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

A revolutionary new theory and call to action on animal rights, ethics, and law from the renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum. Animals are in trouble all over the world. Whether through the cruelties of the factory meat industry, poaching and game hunting, habitat destruction, or neglect of the companion animals that people purport to love, animals suffer injustice and horrors at our hands every day. The world needs an ethical awakening, a consciousness-raising movement of international proportions. In Justice for Animals (Simon & Schuster, 2023), one of the world’s most influential philosophers and humanists Martha C. Nussbaum provides a revolutionary approach to animal rights, ethics, and law. From dolphins to crows, elephants to octopuses, Nussbaum examines the entire animal kingdom, showcasing the lives of animals with wonder, awe, and compassion to understand how we can create a world in which human beings are truly friends of animals, not exploiters or users. All animals should have a shot at flourishing in their own way. Humans have a collective duty to face and solve animal harm. An urgent call to action and a manual for change, Nussbaum’s groundbreaking theory directs politics and law to help us meet our ethical responsibilities as no book has done before.Martha C. Nussbaum is currently the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Department of Philosophy and the Law School.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food