American history, culture revealed through its food


'The Food of a Younger Land'

By Mark Kurlansky

Riverhead, 416 pages, $27.95

Mark Kurlansky is a food writer with a difference. He began his career as a foreign correspondent, and such best-selling books as "Cod" and "Salt" reflect his sympathetic understanding of the history and culture of other nations. He turned his attention to his native land with equally savory results in "The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell" and "The Last Fish Tale."

It's hard to imagine a better editor, then, for this delightful compilation of pieces written in the early 1940s for the Federal Writers Project, which planned to follow up its series of state guidebooks with a volume called "America Eats." The FWP ended in 1943, and the unfinished "America Eats" material, "a stack almost two feet high of raw, unedited manuscripts," was turned over to the Library of Congress.

Kurlansky stumbled across that stack while working on "Choice Cuts," his 2002 anthology of food writing. Enthralled by the "chaotic and energetic assortment of reports, stories, and poems on America and its food by hundreds of different voices," he decided to publish a sampling that would capture that vibrant diversity.

For all their differences, each selection displays the populist enthusiasm that made the FWP and its fellow arts projects within the Works Progress Administration such a bracing and welcome addition to American cultural life. It's entirely appropriate that "The Food of a Younger Land" opens with a moving dedication to Studs Terkel, who steadfastly held to those populist ideals throughout his life.

"Emphasis should be divided between food and people," instructed the original FWP directive, and nowhere is that mandate more fulfilled -- for better and worse -- than in the pieces from the South. "Alabama Footwashing at Lonely Dale," "South Carolina Backwoods Barbecue" and "North Carolina Chitterling Strut" capture the region's folkways as well as its down-home cooking; some wince-inducing attempts to reproduce African-American speech and patronizing portraits forestall any facile nostalgia for those pre-civil-rights days.

The section on the Midwest contains a summary essay written by one of the project's most (subsequently) famous authors, Nelson Algren. Steeped in history, filled with information on how the Chippewa cooked venison and how Illinois settlers preserved vegetables in the winter, Algren's essay offers local color of a decidedly different nature than the sort found in his later novels such as "The

Kurlansky's brief introductions to the regional sections soberingly point to once-abundant game now decimated and time-honored hand preparations abandoned in favor of frozen, prepackaged meals. But people didn't always eat and drink healthfully in the days before fast food, we are reminded by such essays as "Coca-Cola Parties in Georgia" and recipes such as "Kentucky Wilted Lettuce" (hot bacon grease poured over greens), not to mention the amazing amount of fried food described.

A review can only hint at the marvelous variety and vivacity of the material assembled here with such care (plus nice dollops of history and biography) by Kurlansky. Food-loving readers will want to grab the book and find their own favorites -- and join the author in raising a martini glass to the memory of Terkel as they flip through its pages.


Wendy Smith reviews books for the Tribune, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.