Wednesday, July 25, 2007

United States of Arugula

For the next two weeks, I'm conducting an on-line interview with David Kamp, author of United States of Arugula. The subtitles for the hardcover and paperback versions of the book say it all.

The publisher gave the subtitle How We Became a Gourmet Nation to the hardcover. This has given way to the funnier and more accurate The Sun-Dried, Cold-Pressed, Dark-Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution in the recently-published paperback.

David covers the last 60 years or so of American food history, starting with the sometimes-strange, sometimes-wonderful careers of Julia Child, James Beard, and Craig Claiborne (and some of their predecessors), and hurtling down the decades to the generation of Alice Waters and further to the TV chefs of today. The book is a ton of fun, and David is an extremely entertaining guy.

The interview is being hosted on The Well, an early on-line community of which I'm been a member for (choke) nearly 17 years. You can read the interview, and, by sending email (to me or to the address mentioned in the introductory posting), have your questions answered in the interview.

Follow the interview here.

Read David's Web site here.

No comments: