Book cover of National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home

Book description

Travelling from Paris to Tokyo, from Seville, Oaxaca and Naples to Istanbul, she investigates the rapid decline of France's pot-au-feu, the misconstrued beginnings of pizza, the meeting of indigenous and European lineages in mole, and the complex legacy of multi-culturalism in a meze potluck.

"Never have we been more cosmopolitan…

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Why read it?

1 author picked National Dish as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Appealing to my inner foodie, this is a brilliant deconstruction of a number of different countries’ supposed national dishes and the truth behind their real nature. I especially enjoyed the debunking of pizza!

As someone who has travelled and eaten widely, I loved the descriptions of both national character and food origins covered in the book and found the authorial style both wry and highly readable.

If you love National Dish...

Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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