Paul Freedman
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How medieval Europe's infatuation with expensive, fragrant, and exotic spices led to an era of colonial expansion and the discovery of new worlds
The demand for spices in medieval Europe was extravagant and was reflected in the pursuit of fashion, the formation of taste, and the growth of luxury trade. It inspired geographical and commercial exploration, as traders pursued such common spices as pepper and cinnamon and rarer aromatic products, including...
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The Splendor and Opulence of the Past traces the career of Jaume Caresmar (1717–1791), a church historian and a key figure of the Catalan Enlightenment who transcribed tens of thousands of parchments to preserve and glorify Catalonia's medieval past in the face of its diminishing autonomy. As Paul Freedman shows, Caresmar's books, essays, and transcriptions-some only recently discovered-provide fresh insights into the Middle Ages as remembered in...
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An award-winning historian makes the case for food's cultural importance, stressing its crucial role throughout human history. Why does food matter? Historically, food has not always been considered a serious subject on par with, for instance, a performance art like opera or a humanities discipline like philosophy. Necessity, ubiquity, and repetition contribute to the apparent banality of food, but these attributes don't capture food's emotional and...
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Freedman reveals how the history of our restaurants reflects nothing less than the history of America itself. Whether charting the rise of our love affair with Chinese food through San Francisco's fabled The Mandarin or evoking the richness of Italian food through Mamma Leone's, he uses each restaurant to tell a wider story of race and class, immigration and assimilation.
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"With an ambitious sweep over two hundred years, Paul Freedman's lavishly illustrated history shows that there actually is an American cuisine. For centuries, skeptical foreigners-and even millions of Americans-have believed there was no such thing as American cuisine. In recent decades, hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza have been thought to define the nation's palate. Not so, says food historian Paul Freedman, who demonstrates that there is an exuberant...