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NonfictionHistoryFood & Drink

The Secret History of Food

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

When we pour a bowl of cereal or enjoy a dish of vanilla ice cream, we’re not usually thinking about the origins of these foods. We consume them because they are nutritionally beneficial or taste delicious. But even though food is a basic need (and one of life’s great pleasures!), its story is still vastly misunderstood.

For example, try to imagine a life without french fries, ketchup or tomato sauce. These are some of the most popular foods in America, yet their sources were once feared and shunned. Tomatoes were thought to be poisonous, and people believed potatoes harbored an illicit connection to witchcraft and devil worship. Food and culture writer Matt Siegel dishes out these and hundreds of other little-known nuggets in his fascinating debut book, The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Matt Siegel describes the top 12 weirdest moments in food history, from Patagonian toothfish to Cuban supercows.

Organized into 10 chapters focusing on themes ranging from the history of swallowing to obsolete and dated food beliefs, Siegel shares countless “did you know?” factoids. Foodstuffs have been used as weaponry, for example, and the domestication of corn is considered an anthropological game changer on par with the discovery of fire. His choice of subjects is ever surprising, such as the conundrum that is the chili pepper. This fiery fruit (botanically, it’s a berry) contains pain-inducing capsaicin yet is consumed by humans across the world. As it turns out, spicy food is a natural preservative and “may have functioned as a primitive form of air conditioning” in hot climates.

Siegel’s book is as entertaining as it is informative, sprinkled with humorous anecdotes and connections to popular culture. He takes intel gathered from nutritionists, psychologists, food historians and paleoanthropologists and weaves together a tale that moves seamlessly from one topic to the next. Written in a style that is accessible yet scholarly, The Secret History of Food will delight and enlighten anyone looking to find out more about food’s rich backstory.

Matt Siegel takes intel from nutritionists, psychologists and historians and weaves together an entertaining, enlightening account of food’s rich backstory.
NonfictionHistoryEuropean History

The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

Review by Deborah Mason

Clothing can accomplish many things. It can bestow group identity or express individuality. Creating it can be both an artistic outlet and drudgery. It can reflect the highest standards of craftsmanship or be as simple as sewing a seam. It is both performance and practicality. And, as we learn from Lucy Adlington’s The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive, clothing can be a lifeline out of hell.

It’s difficult to imagine a more unlikely (or hideous) juxtaposition than a fashion salon in Auschwitz. But there it was: a fashion studio and workshop literally yards away from the interrogation block used to torture prisoners. Author and costume historian Adlington discovered the “Upper Salon” while researching a book on the global textile industry during World War II. Established by the larcenous and amoral Hedwig Höss, wife of Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss, the salon’s official mission was to provide beautiful, haute couture clothing to the wives of top-ranking Nazis, female SS guards at the camp and, foremost, Frau Höss herself. The salon’s other purpose was to provide a safe haven for the enslaved female laborers who, under the supervision of Marta Fuchs, a Jewish prisoner from Slovakia, cut, sewed and altered the outfits that would adorn their tormentors.

Adlington does an excellent job of telling the story of Marta and all the other women whose lives were spared because they had the skills to work in the comparative safety of the Upper Salon. She also provides the greater historical context of how the Nazi government viewed fashion as both a powerful propaganda weapon and an important tool for funding the Holocaust.

This information is helpful in understanding the journeys these designers, seamstresses and cutters took to Auschwitz and the Upper Salon, and overall Adlington weaves historical information into the individual dressmakers’ stories well. But the most powerful lesson from The Dressmakers of Auschwitz is how the bonds of friendship, family and skill allowed these women to survive with humanity while resisting the brutality around them.

It’s difficult to imagine a salon in Auschwitz, but there was in fact a fashion studio mere yards away from the interrogation block used to torture prisoners.
NonfictionMilitary History

Humane

Review by Roger Bishop

In 1880, the chief of the Prussian General Staff wrote, “Eternal peace is a dream—and hardly a beautiful one. . . . War is part of the world order that God ordained.” Many have disagreed with this statement and offered various alternatives, from abolishing war completely to conducting it in a more humane way. In his enlightening and provocative Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale, offers “an antiwar history of the laws of war” that traces America’s journey, over the last century and a half, toward the disturbing place we now find ourselves: a period of endless war.

Moyn discusses many notable individuals, causes and arguments within this history, including the founding of the Red Cross despite Leo Tolstoy’s strong opposition. The peace efforts of an Austrian noblewoman named Bertha von Suttner, especially through her book Lay Down Your Arms in 1889, stand out as well. Moyn writes, “Before World War I, no document of Western civilization did more to turn what had been a crackpot and marginal call for an end to endless war into a mainstream cause.” In 1905, von Suttner became the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Moyn argues that the increased use of “unmanned aerial vehicles” (armed drones) and U.S. Special Forces in the modern era makes belligerency more humane but augurs for a grim future. In Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize address in 2009, he said, “We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.” Instead, Obama emphasized a commitment to global justice and international law and insisted on humane constraints—which included the use of drones. He sanctioned the use of armed drones more times in his first year in office than George W. Bush did in eight years. By the time Obama left office, drones had struck almost 10 times more than under his predecessor, with thousands killed. Special Forces units were engaged in fighting in at least 13 countries during the last year of Obama’s presidency, and the same approach continued during the Trump years.

This sweeping and relevant book is a vital look at how foreign policy should be conducted ethically in the face of America’s endless wars.

In his enlightening and provocative book, Samuel Moyn traces the history of America’s disturbing journey toward a period of endless war.
NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

Hero of Two Worlds

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

In this engrossing biography, author and history podcaster Mike Duncan, who explored the Roman Republic in The Storm Before the Storm, illuminates the eventful life of the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette is, of course, a popular hero of the American Revolution. Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution broadens our understanding of his engagement in other major political movements, as well, chronicling his role in the French Revolution and the toppling of the Bourbon Dynasty in 1830.

At first glance, nothing in Lafayette’s early history suggests his future commitment to liberal ideals. Lafayette (1757–1834) was born Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier in Chavaniac, France. A son of the nobility, he lost his father when he was only 2, making him the sole heir to the family’s fortune. His mother’s death when he was 12 left him in the care of guardians who made many decisions for him, including arranging his marriage to Adrienne d’Ayen at age 16. They were a devoted couple until her death in 1807.

Duncan traces the origin of Lafayette’s embrace of liberty and equality to the summer of 1775, when he first learned of George Washington and the colonists’ struggles. Politics had cut short his career in the French army, so Lafayette decided to follow this new noble cause. He managed to become a major general in the Continental Army, and by age 24, he’d earned a stellar reputation on both sides of the Atlantic.

In detailing Lafayette’s long career, Duncan takes a measured approach to his subject, making excellent use of primary sources, especially letters. The author effectively balances Lafayette the man with Lafayette the public figure and helps delineate the relationship between the United States and France. 

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of A Hero of Two Worlds is Duncan’s exploration of Lafayette’s long and enduring popularity with Americans. (Unlike the French, the Americans never stopped loving him.) In 1824, Lafayette was invited for a visit by President James Monroe as the nation prepared for its 50th anniversary. Lafayette received a hero’s welcome, his presence reminding “local and state leaders they were a single nation with a shared past and collective future.”

Lafayette was a unique and unifying figure in American history, celebrated and revered by all political parties. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Duncan’s impressive biography provides an insightful look at the American Revolution that can be appreciated by history lovers and general readers alike.

Mike Duncan’s insightful, impressive biography of the Marquis de Lafayette can be appreciated by history lovers and general readers alike.
NonfictionHistory

Cuba

Review by Sarojini Seupersad

To explore the history of Cuba is to explore the history of the United States. In her new epic history, Cuba: An American History, author and historian Ada Ferrer shows the complex ties between these two countries going back centuries.

As the myth goes, Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492. But in actuality, he didn’t discover anything in the United States; he landed in Cuba, which was already very much inhabited. Columbus and his men killed most of the Indigenous population and, with Spain’s backing, introduced an economy that used enslaved labor to produce sugar, tobacco and rum. 

With his blunder of mistaking Cuba for India, Columbus initiated Spain’s centurieslong era of colonial dominance—with Havana, Cuba, at the center of it all. By the 18th century, Havana was the third-largest city in the New World. Britain and France, looking to end Spain’s colonial power, sought control of Cuba for its strategic location in the Caribbean, as well as for its military fortifications and natural riches. Meanwhile, as England’s colonies in North America grew, the fledgling United States profited enormously from Cuba’s economy. Eventually, because of their symbiotic relationship, Cuba supported the United States’ fight against Britain.

As time went on, Spain’s control of the Americas eroded, especially after the Seven Years War and the Spanish-American War. Ferrer’s retelling of these wars’ events from an updated, more nuanced perspective will bring a fresh view to history you thought you already knew. The narrative is often simplified as “the United States saved Cuba,” but Ferrer’s look at the Spanish-American War frames it as the point at which relations between the two countries finally began to sour.

Organized into 12 parts and accompanied by stunning historical photographs and illustrations, Cuba covers more than five centuries of complicated and dynamic history. Although much of the book covers the upheaval and chaos of the 20th century, Ferrer is an exceptionally thorough guide of the 15th century onward, careful to keep her readers’ attention with interesting characters, new insights on historical events and dramatic yet accessible writing. This new history of Cuba shows how connected all of our countries’ histories really are.

Ada Ferrer keeps her readers’ attention with interesting characters, new historical insights and dramatic yet accessible writing in her epic history of Cuba.
NonfictionAudioBlack History

How the Word Is Passed

Review by Autumn Allen

Writer, poet and educator Clint Smith narrates the audio edition of How the Word Is Passed (10 hours), a timely reckoning with America’s past dependence on the cruel institution of chattel slavery. Smith brings the listener on a tour of locations with fraught ties to the transatlantic slave trade, from his hometown of New Orleans to Senegal. He reads his smooth, journalistic prose in a weighty, measured cadence. Listeners will find themselves paying closer attention and appreciating the author’s perspective even more because of how Smith’s narration lends gravity to his experiences and purpose to their telling.

Those who appreciate a good documentary will feel most at home with this audiobook. The content is heavy, at times nearly overwhelming, but Smith’s factual storytelling voice, with fitting but muted inflection throughout, models the courage and fortitude required to take it all in. This book is a generous gift to a nation struggling to define itself.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: From a Louisiana native to a D.C. high school teacher to a Harvard Ph.D. candidate to a staff writer for The Atlantic—Clint Smith shares the journey that led to his brilliant nonfiction debut.

Clint Smith’s narration of How the Word Is Passed models the courage and fortitude required to face this timely reckoning with America’s past.
NonfictionHistoryEuropean History

The Viking Heart

Review by Carly Nations

After the image went viral of a man dressed in a Viking headdress and face paint at the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, there was a deluge of criticism of the contemporary celebration of medieval imagery. White supremacist groups have lately embraced such imagery, including symbols from the Scandanavian marauders and Christian Crusaders. As The Viking Heart opens, Arthur Herman anticipates these critiques.

“The crucial mistake many make is to insist that the defining legacy of the Viking heart is somehow racial,” Herman writes. “In truth, the Norsemen of the Dark Ages never formed a single race or even one national identity. What defined them was a way of life and an outlook that we can delineate as cultural and spiritual, and they still have relevance and meaning today.” 

What follows is a comprehensive history of the different groups that would eventually be known as the Vikings. Herman also includes an outline of Scandinavians’ contemporary contributions to European and American history, from their involvement in the Civil War as Union soldiers to Knute Rockne’s legendary football coaching career. He attributes such contributions not to some set of uniquely Scandinavian genetic traits but to what he calls the “Viking heart”—an unquenchable thirst for improvement married to a strong sense of community-building.

Whether you’re new to Viking scholarship or a well-read medievalist, The Viking Heart has something to offer. While there are some places where Herman could have better amplified the advantages Scandinavians experienced as immigrants at the turn of the 20th century, all in all, The Viking Heart honestly assesses the results of the Vikings’ past actions around the world and makes an evenhanded argument for the importance of Viking culture in U.S. history. 

As we wrestle with how to make our world a better, more equal place, The Viking Heart provides a framework for recognizing the importance of the past in shaping our present and future.

Arthur Herman attributes Scandinavians’ many historical contributions to the “Viking heart,” an unquenchable thirst for improvement and community-building.
NonfictionHistoryEuropean History

The Gallery of Miracles and Madness

Review by Deborah Mason

In The Gallery of Miracles and Madness: Insanity, Modernism, and Hitler’s War on Art, Charlie English, former head of international news at the Guardian, tells the tale of two art critics.

The first, Hans Prinzhorn, was an art historian and psychiatrist. Employed by the Heidelberg University Psychiatric Hospital in 1919, he was given the task of cataloging and evaluating the patients’ artwork for diagnostic purposes. Prinzhorn quickly realized that these works were more than expressions of mental illness. They were art, filled with life’s horror, humanity and energy. He set about collecting more artworks from different clinics and asylums and, in 1922, published the influential book Artistry of the Mentally Ill. 

The second critic was a self-taught Austrian artist named Adolf Hitler. English explains that Hitler primarily considered himself an artist and thought his greatest work would be the German people. Creating “pure” German art would be key to the success of that project. Yet Hitler could not say what German art was; he could only say what it was not. And it definitely was not produced by people who were mentally ill.

To prove that point, Hitler ordered an exhibition of “degenerate art,” including works from Prinzhorn’s collection, to show how “corrupt” and “insane” modern art had become. For Hitler, an unworthy life was as disposable and valueless as unworthy art. Consequently, he went on to orchestrate the murder of tens of thousands of those whose lives he deemed “unworthy,” including people who were disabled and chronically ill—and at least two dozen of the Prinzhorn artists.

This is not an abstract book of ideas. The battle between these two views of art was, literally, a matter of life and death, so English uses the life and death of Franz Karl Bühler, the most accomplished of Prinzhorn’s artists, to frame his story. From master ironsmith to psychiatric patient to discovered artist, all the way to the terrifying details that led to his murder by carbon monoxide gassing, Bühler’s life and death illuminate the void at the heart of Nazism.

The Gallery of Miracles and Madness is profoundly heartbreaking, unexpectedly redeeming and immensely important.

In The Gallery of Miracles and Madness, Charlie English tells the tale of two art critics: Hans Prinzhorn and Adolf Hitler.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistory

New Women in the Old West

Review by Anne Bartlett

The campaign for women's suffrage in the United States was a tough slog over three generations, from the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Frustrating defeats were the rule—except in the West. By 1914, 11 Western states already allowed women to vote. In Wyoming, they'd been doing it since 1869, well before statehood.

Winifred Gallagher’s comprehensive New Women in the Old West: From Settlers to Suffragists, an Untold American Story unearths this story through the lives of dozens of forgotten trailblazers. Suffrage is only part of it; women settlers were integral to building communities and developing the economy as the United States expanded, and the Native and Mexican women already living in the West were critical in the fight against encroachment and discrimination.

Early pioneer women were crucial full-time partners to men who were farmers and miners. Many became “town mothers,” the forces behind the establishment of schools, churches and libraries. Countless women built businesses, including Luzena Stanley Wilson, who became a successful hotel entrepreneur during the 1848 gold rush. A surprising number of women, like Oregon suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway, became prosperous as milliners, a business friendly to women at a time when everyone wore hats.

Beginning in the 1860s, the federal Homestead Acts, which granted applicants ownership rights to public lands in the West, and the Morrill Acts, which created land-grant universities, opened other paths for women. Female homesteaders, many of whom were immigrants, were relatively few in number, but they proved their claims at a higher rate than men. Coed land-grant universities also grew the teaching profession, newly open to women. 

Gallagher is candid about the less appealing elements of this story as well. Initial suffrage measures passed in part because white men hoped the votes of white women would offset those of immigrant and Black men. Additionally, Gallagher documents the ways in which white women who were missionaries and teachers demeaned people of color and backed damaging assimilationist policies.

Overall, Gallagher’s rediscoveries are inspirational. Hard conditions and sparse populations created opportunities for women in the West unavailable to them elsewhere. They fought their way into business ownership, education, professional careers—and ultimately voting booths and elective office.

The campaign for women's suffrage in the United States was a tough slog—except in the West. New Women in the Old West unearths dozens of forgotten trailblazers.
NonfictionAudioBlack History

We Are Each Other’s Harvest

Review by Mari Carlson

The audiobook of Natalie Baszile’s We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy (13.5 hours) explores farming by Black Americans, past and present, through essays, interviews and poetry from farmers and historians, wordsmiths and activists. The expansive project, born out of Baszile’s extensive research for her 2014 novel, Queen Sugar, is bookended by the author’s own words about her family and her creative process. In between, we learn about the Black community’s enduring connection to the land despite slavery’s disenfranchisement and northern and urban migration, among other factors.

Tina Lifford, an actor in the TV adaptation of Queen Sugar as well as the series “Parenthood” and “South Central,” captures the book’s soulful tone through her deep voice, slow delivery and an array of accents. Her performance pays tribute to the Black community’s oral history tradition, which is referenced throughout the book. 

With rich descriptions of crops, recipes, family meals and current efforts to revitalize Black farming and land ownership, this audiobook inspires, empowers and enlightens through the spoken word.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of the print version of We Are Each Other’s Harvest.

With rich descriptions of crops, recipes, family meals and more, this audiobook inspires, empowers and enlightens through spoken word.
NonfictionAudioHistory

Facing the Mountain

Review by G. Robert Frazier

Bestselling author Daniel James Brown’s enthralling new book, Facing the Mountain (17.5 hours), describes the heroism of Japanese Americans who joined the Army to fight for the U.S. after the December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. While nearly 80 years have passed since that infamous day, Brown’s impassioned account of the trials and tribulations that Japanese Americans faced afterward is eerily reflective of the unjust hatred heaped on Asian Americans in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The audiobook is capably narrated by American actor Louis Ozawa, whose ability to speak both English and Japanese serves him well as he tells the stories of four soldiers and their families who gallantly proved their dedication to their country despite the bigotry they faced. Ozawa’s performance is inspiring and uplifting as he delivers a resounding call for respect after years of hate.

Read our starred review of the print version of Facing the Mountain.

Actor Louis Ozawa’s performance is inspiring and uplifting as he delivers a resounding call for respect after years of hate.
AudioScienceHistory

Empire of Pain

Review by G. Robert Frazier

New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe’s exhaustive research for Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (18 hours) makes him the natural choice to narrate his own audiobook. Keefe knows exactly which points to stress for listeners of this story, which he calls “the taproot of the opioid epidemic” in America—not that added emphasis is really needed, as the book’s content is shocking enough.

In jaw-dropping detail, Keefe recounts the greed, deception and corruption at the heart of the Sackler family’s multigenerational quest for wealth and social status. Renowned for their philanthropy, the Sacklers built their fortune through the pharmaceutical industry in the 1940s and ’50s, making calculated moves in medical advertising and with the Food and Drug Administration. Keefe brilliantly traces the Sacklers’ path toward developing controversial pharmaceutical products such as the anti-anxiety medicine Valium and the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin via their company, Purdue Pharma.

The 18-plus hours that it takes to listen to this mind-blowing history may seem intimidating at first, but Keefe’s masterful storytelling makes it worth every minute.

New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe’s exhaustive research for Empire of Pain makes him the natural choice to narrate his own audiobook.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistory

The Woman They Could Not Silence

Review by Anna Christensen

We’re all familiar with the method of discrediting women by making allegations against their mental health whenever they dare to stand up to a man in power. As Radium Girls author Kate Moore ably demonstrates in her new book, The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear, this particularly pernicious tool of the patriarchy has been in use for a very long time.

Elizabeth Packard was a housewife, mother and champion for the disadvantaged and underserved. In the middle of the 19th century, she was involuntarily committed to an Illinois asylum by her husband, a controlling, Confederate-sympathizing Presbyterian minister with whom she had begun publicly disagreeing. At that time, female madness was defined in part as any unladylike behavior, such as arguing one’s case or expressing unhappiness at one’s situation. Anyone who committed these transgressions could be “sent to the madhouse” on nothing more than her husband’s say-so. Packard discovered two terrible truths from her own experience of this tactic: Married women had no rights or legal recourse, and neither did the inmates of asylums.

Once within the walls of the asylum, women were subject to filthy conditions and horrifying physical abuse and torture. As Packard noted, it was as though these asylums were designed to encourage insanity, not heal it. Faced with this seemingly hopeless situation, Packard set out to prove her own sanity and liberate herself and her fellow sisters in a gripping and improbable battle against rich, powerful men.

Packard’s story is, incredibly, not simply one of a woman who survived three years of imprisonment in an asylum for disagreeing with her husband’s religious views. She didn’t throw her energy into merely freeing herself, clearing her name and being reunited with her beloved children. Instead, the brave, brilliant and unshakable Packard went on to pen multiple books on subjects such as emancipation, women’s rights and the rights of people who are mentally ill; to get bills passed asserting the basic human rights and liberties of married women and mentally ill people; and to gain notoriety for confronting injustice no matter the odds.

The Woman They Could Not Silence is compelling not only because of the way it creates an alliance between the reader and the courageous Packard, but also because of how it forces the reader to examine once more the language and attitudes around women’s mental health. In Packard we see a foremother of the female leaders of today: intelligent, tenacious and impossible to cow.

In the 19th century, a brave, brilliant and completely healthy woman named Elizabeth Packard was involuntarily committed to an Illinois asylum by her husband.

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