Food, Peripatetic Food ; Historic Journeys of Our Most Common Commodity

Summary

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Part travelogue, part historical collage and largely intriguing, "Moveable Feasts" begins at one of classical Rome's least likely monuments, a 165-foot-high hill made of shards of broken clay jars. These amphorae held some 1.6 billion gallons of olive oil imported from Spain to the caesars teeming city, which also consumed wheat shipped from Egypt, wine from Greece, fruit from Syria, nuts from Anatolia, tuna spiced with pepper from India, and myriad other delicacies and staples from other countries throughout the known world.

That Roman hill is a monument to the appetite and, as Sarah Murray presents it, a vantage point to understanding a process nearly as old as civilization. Today we take it for granted that we can breakfast on South African strawberries in January and grill New Zealand "spring" lamb at tailgate parties, while oysters "R" in season in Kansas City all year round. Yet it was ever thus, because as "Moveable Feasts" argues, food travels.

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Food, Peripatetic Food ; Historic Journeys of Our Most Common Commodity

The transport of food since ancient times has been one of the most common ties that bind nations, whether friendly or hostile, into networks of interdependent trading partners. The onl...

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