[.ca] The Gourmet Atlas: The History, Origin, and Migration of ... (ISBN 0028619889)

From Amazon.com:
Buyer beware: once you've started leafing through the pages of The Gourmet Atlas, you probably won't be able to put it down. It is more than just a book about food; within the atlas's pages you'll discover the historical origins of various foods, their political and cultural ramifications, and their positions in the societies in which they're found. Ancient Egyptians, for example, eschewed the bean because they considered it impure, while the Romans believed that the souls of the dead resided in beans, so eating them was akin to cannibalism. The Gourmet Atlas reveals that there are 13 kinds of honey, explains the difference between Italian and French cheeses, and discusses the origins of the cucumber. It includes A-Z listings that detail the backgrounds and uses of major food groups, plus herbs, spices, fruits, nuts and berries, and more. As if that weren't enough, there are also regional recipes scattered throughout the book and illustrations--more than 300 photographs and drawings--that make each page a joy to view as well as to read. The Gourmet Atlas really is the definitive roadmap to the world of food--just don't read it when you're hungry!

not a great atlas of foods:
I am currently taking an upper division geography course on food topics and we are using the "The Gourmet Atlas" as a text. The general feeling of the class is that the maps in this book lack a reasonable cartographic approach. This is quite sad considering that it is an 'atlas'. However, the book does offer some background knowledge on various kinds of foods(though minimal). I personally think the subject the authors tried to take on is extremely fascinating but the manner in which they did so was not successful.

Disappointing. . .:
I love food books and history books and was perhaps expecting a more thorough discussion of the history of food and it's migration from region to region. At best, the discussions were cursory and hardly as comprehensive as one would expect in a book labeled as an atlas. Significant information was missing about foods that weren't of interest to the authors and information about other foods important enough in historical economic impact to require their entry still left out detail I know from other, better sources. At best, this book serves adequately, perhaps even well, as an introduction to it's subject, but it is little better than that. IMO, for cover price, it's not worth it. For $..., it certainly is worth the content. Amazon's price comes close, but not close enough for me to give this as a gift (unless I give my own copy).

A Disappointment:
I was expecting something more scholarly I suppose. The Gourmet Atlas contains: some great maps of the migration of foodstuffs; recipes which look good; time-lines; charts and some wonderful photos and pretty pictures. But this visual appeal is at the expense of the text, which I found light-weight, and the writing is sometimes confusing. If you are serious about food then this is lacking in many areas - no bibliography or references for starters and I found some factual errors. The very short introduction promises that the atlas will be THE source for the avid student and casual inquirer. The serious student would be better to stick to something like Waverley Root's FOOD.Meanwhile I await Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food. The Gourmet Atlas is a pretty book and could prove quite handy butis hardly a definitive reference. Good for someone starting out with an interest in food.