The Story of Corn
The Story of Corn is a unique compendium, drawing upon history and mythology, science and art, anecdote and image, personal narrative and epic to tell the extraordinary story of the grain that built the New World. Corn transformed the way the entire world eats, providing a hardy, inexpensive alternative to rice or wheat and cheap fodder for livestock and finding its way into everything from explosives to embalming fluid.
Betty Fussell has given us a true American saga, interweaving the histories of the indigenous peoples who first cultivated the grain and the European conquerors who appropriated and propagated it around the globe. She explores corn's roles as food, fetish, crop, and commodity to those who have planted, consumed, worshiped, processed, and profited from it for seven centuries.
Now available only from the University of New Mexico Press, The Story of Corn, is the winner of a Julia Child Cookbook Award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
"Written in a lively and nontechnical style."--Library Journal
"Fussell has clearly done a good deal of research and a lot of traveling--peering over a precipice at Machu Picchu, descending into a restored ceremonial kiva of the Anasazi people in New Mexico, visiting the sole surviving corn palace from the Midwest boosters--glory days of a century ago."--Kirkus Reviews
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BETTY FUSSELL is the author of ten previous books, including The Story of Corn and My Kitchen Wars. A contributor to the New York Times, the New Yorker, Saveur, Food & Wine, Gastronomica, and other publications, she has also lectured widely on food history. Western born, she lives in New York City.
""The Story of Corn" is a fascinating read."
." . . a fascinating read. Look for the book and dive in."
"The fascinating story of corn is told in a wonderfully engaging book by Betty Fussell, a food historian."
"Fussell tells a fascinating, thoroughly researched and comprehensive story of the centrality of corn to American culture."
." . . a lively blend of anecdotes and facts about world corn. . .a specialized food history that will appeal across many different lines, from students of anthropology and sociology to culiary enhusiasts and history buffs."
"Fussell has the admirable virtue of integrating her copious research gracefully into the vast narrative that tracks corn through the empire of the Incas to the moderm saga of ethanol fuels, deftly blending anthropology, science and history. . . The carefully selected bibliography is a fine finishing touch to this sophisticated and satisfying "tour de force.""
." . .a most wide-ranging, complex account. . The author delves into corn's long history, from it's origins as a grass to its place in the mythology and economy of aboriginal peoples, and its modern usefulness as scientists probe the limits of its molecules. . . This is a book that needed writing and one that imaginative teachers can fit into a whole range of school subjects."
