{"product_id":"a-history-of-cooks-and-michael-symons-9780252071928","title":"A History of Cooks and Cooking","description":"Never has there been so little need to cook. Yet Michael Symons maintains that to be truly human we need to become better cooks: practical and generous sharers of food. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Fueled by James Boswell's definition of humans as cooking animals (for \"no beast can cook\"), Symons sets out to explore the civilizing role of cooks in history. His wanderings take us to the clay ovens of the prehistoric eastern Mediterranean and the bronze cauldrons of ancient China, to fabulous banquets in the temples and courts of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Persia, to medieval English cookshops and southeast Asian street markets, to palace kitchens, diners, and modern fast-food eateries. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Symons samples conceptions and perceptions of cooks and cooking from Plato and Descartes to Marx and Virginia Woolf, asking why cooks, despite their vital and central role in sustaining life, have remained in the shadows, unheralded, unregarded, and underappreciated. \"People think of meals as occasions where you share food,\" he notes; \"they rarely think of cooks as sharers of food.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Considering such notions as the physical and political consequences of sauce, connections between food and love, and cooking as a regulator of clock and calendar, Symons provides a spirited and diverting defense of a cook-centered view of the world. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Michael Symons\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0252071921\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780252071928\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Illinois Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 01\/01\/2004\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 400\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.21lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.06w x 0.95d","brand":"Michael Symons","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44075984519423,"sku":"9780252071928","price":25.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_0c13aacc-e865-4411-a56d-f1ef128fa105.jpg?v=1685462536","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/a-history-of-cooks-and-michael-symons-9780252071928","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}