By Jeff Burns
Due
to various circumstances, I’ve probably read less than summer than any other
summer in my life. It wasn’t a bad
summer at all; I just couldn’t get into a reading mood. That didn’t stop me from adding great books
to my reading list. Here are some titles
I hope to get to very soon.
Annette
Gordon-Reid has made a name for herself as a leading historian on the subject
of Thomas Jefferson, particularly his relationship with Sally Hemings. In 2009, she published The Hemingses of
Monticello: An American Family. It
is about more than the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings; it is also
about their children and their relationship with Jefferson.
Blood
at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips is about one
of the darkest moments in Georgia history, the organized violent campaign in
1912 that forced more than 1,000 black citizens of Forsyth County. For the next
seventy years, the county remained all white.
On a
lighter note, food history is another of my interests, and there are a couple
of new food history titles on my list. Michael Twitty is a chef and food
historian whose specialty is African-American cooking and its influence on
southern cuisine. His book is called The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through
African American Culinary History in the South.
Laura
Shapiro writes about food history from a women’s history perspective, and her
latest is What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Foods That Tell Their
Stories. Read it and find out what food reveals about Eleanor Roosevelt,
Eva Braun, and four others in a sort of culinary biography.
Finally,
a story about food, medicine, quackery, the food industry, and major sibling
rivalry: The Kelloggs: the Battling Brothers of Battle Creek. You know they created the whole breakfast
cereal industry and changed the way Americans ate breakfast, but you might not
know the origin story of their food and their company, and the intense family
dysfunction between the two brothers.
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