In an authoritative, wise and wholly original blend of social history, art, science and anthropology, Betty Fussell tells the story of corn in a narrative that is as uniquely hybrid as her subject. It is a story that can be told in the language of myth or industry, of sacred ritual or secular farming, but in any language it makes clear that all the civilizations of the Western Hemisphere have been built on corn. The great epic of this amazing grain and of the people who for seven centuries have planted, eaten, worshipped, processed and profited from it reaches into every corner of American life--not just its food but also its poetry, its commerce, its religion and, of course, its booze. In her beautifully balanced text as well as in hundreds of extraordinary illustrations, Fussell juxtaposes the many facets of corn's history and influence to surprising, dramatic effect. The Story of Corn changes completely one's sense of the shape and nature of the American experience. You will never again munch on a hush puppy, admire a Maya temple, read Hiawatha or simply pass a cornfield in the same way.

Although "My Kitchen Wars" is a war story, this time the warrior is a woman and the battleground the kitchen. Her weapons--the "batterie de cuisine" of grills and squeezers and knives--evoke a lifetime's need to make dinner, love, and war. By prying open the past with these implements, Betty Fussell gives voice to a generation of women whose stories were shaped and yet simultaneously silenced by an era of domestic strife and global conflict, from World War II to Vietnam. "My Kitchen Wars" also is a love story, recounting Fussell's liberation from the tyrannical Puritanism of her family by a veteran of the "Good War," a young writer named Paul Fussell. But she soon finds herself captive again, constrained by the roles of faculty wife and mother. Still, she cannot stop hungering for both a life of the mind and carnal pleasures. Her inner war to unite body and mind brings down the marriage in a denouement as brutal as the whack of a cleaver. Yet Fussell, however bruised, emerges to cook another dinner and to tell her tale in this fierce and funny memoir. "My Kitchen Wars" was adapted into a one-woman play performed in Hollywood and New York.

Ever since American soldiers returned home after World War II with a passion for pate and escargots instead of pork and beans, our preferences have moved from cooked to raw, from canned to fresh, from bland to savory, from water to wine. And guiding us through our culinary revolution have been four of the world's finest food experts: Julia Child, Craig Claiborne, James Beard, and M. F. K. Fisher. In "Masters of American Cookery," Betty Fussell demonstrates vividly how each of these chefs has made a unique and invaluable contribution to the American way of cooking and eating. In more than two hundred recipes--in chapters on appetizers, soups, salads, sauces, meats, poultry, fish, breads, cheeses and wines, and desserts--Fussell shares the artistry of these culinary masters. She also traces the evolution of each dish and provides insightful, often witty asides about the origins of the recipes. In the tradition of Waverley Root and M. F. K. Fisher herself, Fussell has combined elements of history, memoir, and the cookbook to create a food lover's delight. As entertaining as it is instructive, "Masters of American Cookery" belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who cares about good food. Fussell provides a preface for this Bison Books edition.

When we bite into a steak's charred crust and pink interior, we bite into contradictions that have branded our nation from the start. We taste the competing fantasies of British pastoralists and Spanish ranchers that erupted in land wars between a wet-weather East and a desert West. We savor the ideas of wilderness and progress that clashed when we replaced buffalo with cattle, and then cowboys with industrial machines. We witness rugged individualism and corporate technology collide when we breed, feed, slaughter, package, and distribute the animals we turn into meat. And we participate--like the cattlemen, chefs, feedlot operators, and scientists Fussell talks with--in the mythology that inspires cowboys to become technocrats and presidents to play cowboy.

A celebration and an elegy for a uniquely American Dream, "Raising Steaks" takes an "unflinching look at the ethical and environmental implications of modern meat ... yet leaves us with a powerful hankering for a thick T-bone grilled rare"--"Michael Pollan"

"M.F.K Fisher's latest excursion into the art or science of gastronomy is more an anthology of the finest writing on the subject than strictly a text of her own composition . . . A royal feast, indeed!" -The New York Times Betty Fussell-winner of the James Beard Foundation's journalism award, and whose essays on food, travel, and the arts have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Saveur, and Vogue-is the perfect writer to introduce M.F.K Fisher's Here Let Us Feast, first published in 1946. The author of Eat, Live, Love, Die has penned a brilliant introduction to this fabulous anthology of gastronomic writing, selected and with commentary from the inimitable M.F.K. Fisher. The celebrated author of such books as The Art of Eating, The Cooking of Provincial France, and With Bold Knife and Fork, Fisher knows how to prepare a feast of reading as no other. Excerpting descriptions of bountiful meals from classic works of British and American literature, Fisher weaves them into a profound discussion of feasting. She also traces gluttony through the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and claims that the story of a nation's life is charted by its gastronomy. M.F.K. Fisher has arranged everything perfectly, and the result is a succession of unforgettable courses that will entice the most reluctant epicure.