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A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America

by James E. McWilliams

Columbia University Press, 386 pp., $29.95

Along with all things culinary, interest continues to grow regarding food within cultural and historic contexts, if the prevalence and popularity of such books are any indication. (Mark Kurlansky's bestsellers on the history of cod and of salt come to mind.) Food history has long been examined within academic contexts, and in A Revolution in Eating, James McWilliams, professor of history at Texas State in San Marcos, ably demonstrates that the way people eat is integral to their politics, as well as that an esoteric topic like Colonial American foodways can make for accessible, fascinating reading.

McWilliams' basic thesis, which he argues most convincingly, is that, from pilgrims through American Revolutionists, the ways in which early North American settlers fed themselves via foraging, learning from native inhabitants, and food cultivation, had everything to do with their self-identity and relationship to one another and the new land. He shows how the fledgling nation evolved from separate, regionally distinct colonies into a cohesive political entity that shared foodways, values, and food-related economic interests.

McWilliams discusses the early eating and agricultural practices of the West Indies, New England, Chesapeake Bay, the Carolinas, and the Middle Colonies of New York and Pennsylvania. For each of these regions, he describes how their respective staple crops of sugar, rice, and wheatÊshaped the economies; he compares settlers' food and trade relationships with the indigenous inhabitants, and most interestingly, he elucidates the huge degree to whichÊslaves influenced the cooking and eating in each area.

Vaguely pedagogical in style, McWilliams manages to be simultaneously instructive and entertaining, reiterating his points and providing numerous illustrative examples. Like a good teacher, he tells compelling stories that get students' attention, encourage them to remember what is important, and make them think about the subject in a new way.