{"title":"Alysa Levene","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"cake-a-slice-of-history-book-alysa-levene-9781472226846","title":"Cake: A Slice of History","description":"If you have wondered about the stories behind the cakes made on the Great British Bake Off or the difference between a Victoria sandwich and a sponge cake (especially if Mary Berry or Nigella Lawson is not to hand), this is the book for you. Baking has always been about memories passed down through families and Alysa Levene will take you through this compelling social history of baking.  'My sister had three wedding cakes. Rather than spend a lot of money on a traditional cake she asked our grandmother, our mother, and our step-mother to make their signature bakes. My grandmother made the rich fruit cake she always baked at Christmas. My mother made a chocolate sponge which we called Queenie's Chocolate Cake after the great aunt who gave her the recipe; it appeared at almost every one of our birthdays in one guise or another. And finally, my step-mother made chocolate brownies (Nigella Lawson's recipe, if you'd like to know), whose sticky, pleasurable unctuousness is fully explained by the amount of butter they contain.   'In our family, as in many others, these familiar cakes are the makers of memories. My siblings and I took this idea into our adult lives, and now bake for our own families.  But it wasn't until I developed an  interest in the history of food that I started to think about the deeper significance of these tasty treats. What does cake mean for different people? How have we come to have such a huge variety of cakes? What had to happen historically for them to appear? And what can they tell us about the family, and women's roles in particular? I wrote this book to find out the answers.'  What follows is a journey from King Alfred to our modern-day love of cupcakes, via Queen Victoria's patriotic sandwich, the Southern States of America, slavery and the spice trade, to the rise of the celebrity chef . . . and so much more.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49512939127057,"sku":"GOR007335043","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49601881014545,"sku":"GOR007343750","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52325418500369,"sku":"GOR009493620","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1472226844.jpg?v=1750988487"},{"product_id":"cake-book-alysa-levene-9781605989273","title":"Cake","description":"It was the year 878 A.D., and a man claims sanctuary in a small village home in Wessex. To the surprise of the villager, the man is not a passing vagabond but Alfred, King of the Anglo-Saxons. The village homemaker is happy to hide him from the marauding Danes, provided he keeps an eye on the cake she has baking in the oven. Preoccupied with how to re-take his kingdom, Alfred lets the cakes burn, and the incident passed in to folklore forever. From these seemingly ignoble beginnings, not only was Alfred able to reclaim his spot in history, but the humble villagers' cake has ascended in world culture as well. Alysa Levene looks at cakes both ancient and modern, from the Fruit Cake, to the Pound Cake, from the ubiquitous birthday cake to the Angel Food Cake, all the way up to competitive baking shows on television and our modern obsession with macaroons and cup cakes. Along the way, author Alysa Levene shows how cakes are so much more than just a delicious sugar hit, and reflects on how and why cakes became the food to eat in times of celebration. Cake reflects cultural differences, whether it is the changing role of women in the home, the expansion of global trade, even advances in technology. Entertaining and delightfully informative, Cake: A Slice of History promises to be a witty and joyous celebration of our cultural heritage.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49865171075345,"sku":"CIN1605989274G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52815908602129,"sku":"CIN1605989274VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1605989274.jpg?v=1751120318"},{"product_id":"cake-book-alysa-levene-9781681773490","title":"Cake","description":"Cake can evoke thoughts of home, comfort someone at a time of grief or celebrate a birth or new love. It is a maker of memories, a marker of identities, and delicious  \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIt was the year 878 A.D., and a man claimed sanctuary in a small village home in Wessex. To the surprise of the villager, the man was not a passing vagabond but Alfred, King of the Anglo-Saxons. The village homemaker was happy to hide him from the marauding Danes, provided he keep an eye on the cake she had baking in the oven. Preoccupied with how to re-take his kingdom, Alfred let the cake burn, and the incident passed into folklore forever. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFrom these seemingly ignoble beginnings, not only was Alfred able to reclaim his spot in history, but the humble villager's cake has become a part of world culture as well. Alysa Levene looks at cakes both ancient and modern, from the fruit cake, to the pound cake, from the ubiquitous birthday cake to the angel food cake, all the way up to competitive baking shows on television and our modern obsession with macaroons and cup cakes. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAlong the way, author Alysa Levene shows how cakes are so much more than just a delicious sugar hit, and reflects on how and why cakes became \u003ci\u003ethe \u003c\/i\u003efood to eat in times of celebration. Cake reflects cultural differences, whether it is the changing role of women in the home, the expansion of global trade, even advances in technology. Entertaining and delightfully informative, \u003ci\u003eCake: A Slice of History\u003c\/i\u003e promises to be a witty and joyous celebration of our cultural heritage.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51334747259153,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51334748373265,"sku":"CIN168177349XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/168177349X.jpg?v=1750764556"},{"product_id":"jews-in-nineteenth-century-britain-book-alysa-levene-9781350201767","title":"Jews in Nineteenth-Century Britain","description":"This book examines Jewish communities in Britain in an era of immense social, economic and religious change: from the acceleration of industrialisation to the end of the first phase of large-scale Jewish immigration from Europe.  Using the 1851 census alongside extensive charity and community records, Jews in Nineteenth-Century Britain tests the impact of migration, new types of working and changes in patterns of worship on the family and community life of seven of the fastest-growing industrial towns in Britain. Communal life for the Jews living there (over a third of whom had been born overseas) was a constantly shifting balance between the generation of wealth and respectability, and the risks of inundation by poor newcomers. But while earlier studies have used this balance as a backdrop for the story of individual Jewish communities, this book highlights the interactions between the people who made them up. At the core of the book is the question of what membership of the ‘imagined community’ of global Jewry meant: how it helped those who belonged to it, how it affected where they lived and who they lived with, the jobs that they did and the wealth or charity that they had access to.  By stitching together patterns of residence, charity and worship, Alysa Levene is here able to reveal that religious and cultural bonds had vital functions both for making ends meet and for the formation of identity in a period of rapid demographic, religious and cultural change.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52405942288657,"sku":"NLS9781350201767","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350201767.jpg?v=1758768223"},{"product_id":"narratives-of-the-poor-in-eighteenth-century-england-vol-1-book-alysa-levene-9781138755468","title":"Narratives of the Poor in Eighteenth-Century England Vol 1","description":"Presents narratives of the poor in eighteenth-century Britain. This collection covers the period from the early eighteenth century through to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and includes transcriptions of hand-written first-hand representations of poverty to poor law officials.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52613733875985,"sku":"NLS9781138755468","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781138755468.jpg?v=1761519222"},{"product_id":"narratives-of-the-poor-in-eighteenth-century-england-vol-5-book-alysa-levene-9781138755505","title":"Narratives of the Poor in Eighteenth-Century England Vol 5","description":"Presents narratives of the poor in eighteenth-century Britain. This collection covers the period from the early eighteenth century through to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and includes transcriptions of hand-written first-hand representations of poverty to poor law officials.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52613752258833,"sku":"NLS9781138755505","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53579185094929,"sku":"NIN9781138755505","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781138755505.jpg?v=1761519271"},{"product_id":"narratives-of-the-poor-in-eighteenth-century-england-vol-4-book-alysa-levene-9781138755499","title":"Narratives of the Poor in Eighteenth-Century England Vol 4","description":"Presents narratives of the poor in eighteenth-century Britain. This collection covers the period from the early eighteenth century through to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and includes transcriptions of hand-written first-hand representations of poverty to poor law officials.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52613754093841,"sku":"NLS9781138755499","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53579182801169,"sku":"NIN9781138755499","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781138755499.jpg?v=1761519275"},{"product_id":"narratives-of-the-poor-in-eighteenth-century-england-vol-3-book-alysa-levene-9781138755482","title":"Narratives of the Poor in Eighteenth-Century England Vol 3","description":"Presents narratives of the poor in eighteenth-century Britain. This collection covers the period from the early eighteenth century through to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and includes transcriptions of hand-written first-hand representations of poverty to poor law officials.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52614099665169,"sku":"NLS9781138755482","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53579185324305,"sku":"NIN9781138755482","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781138755482.jpg?v=1761520282"},{"product_id":"narratives-of-the-poor-in-eighteenth-century-england-vol-2-book-alysa-levene-9781138755475","title":"Narratives of the Poor in Eighteenth-Century England Vol 2","description":"Presents narratives of the poor in eighteenth-century Britain. This collection covers the period from the early eighteenth century through to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and includes transcriptions of hand-written first-hand representations of poverty to poor law officials.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52614311969041,"sku":"NLS9781138755475","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781138755475.jpg?v=1761520864"},{"product_id":"childcare-health-and-mortality-in-the-london-foundling-hospital-1741-1800-book-alysa-levene-9780719073557","title":"Childcare, Health and Mortality in the London Foundling Hospital, 1741-1800","description":"Newly available in paperback, this thorough and engaging examination of an institution and its young charges is set in the wider social, cultural, demographic and medical context of the eighteenth century. By examining the often short lives of abandoned babies, Levene illustrates the variety of pathways to health, ill-health and death taken by the young and how it intersected with local epidemiology, institutional life and experiences of abandonment, feeding and child-care. Child fostering, paid nursing and family formation in different parts of England are also examined, showing how this metropolitan institution called on a network of contacts to try to raise its charges to good health.   Of significance to scholars working in economic and social history, medical and institutional history and histories of childhood and childcare in the early modern period, the book will also appeal to anthropologists interested in child-rearing and feeding practices, and inter-family relationships. -- .","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52664024465681,"sku":"NLS9780719073557","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53108527857937,"sku":"NIN9780719073557","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780719073557.jpg?v=1772792134"},{"product_id":"jews-in-nineteenth-century-britain-book-alysa-levene-9781350102187","title":"Jews in Nineteenth-Century Britain","description":"This book examines Jewish communities in Britain in an era of immense social, economic and religious change: from the acceleration of industrialisation to the end of the first phase of large-scale Jewish immigration from Europe.  Using the 1851 census alongside extensive charity and community records, Jews in Nineteenth-Century Britain tests the impact of migration, new types of working and changes in patterns of worship on the family and community life of seven of the fastest-growing industrial towns in Britain. Communal life for the Jews living there (over a third of whom had been born overseas) was a constantly shifting balance between the generation of wealth and respectability, and the risks of inundation by poor newcomers. But while earlier studies have used this balance as a backdrop for the story of individual Jewish communities, this book highlights the interactions between the people who made them up. At the core of the book is the question of what membership of the ‘imagined community’ of global Jewry meant: how it helped those who belonged to it, how it affected where they lived and who they lived with, the jobs that they did and the wealth or charity that they had access to.  By stitching together patterns of residence, charity and worship, Alysa Levene is here able to reveal that religious and cultural bonds had vital functions both for making ends meet and for the formation of identity in a period of rapid demographic, religious and cultural change.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52685997310225,"sku":"NLS9781350102187","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350102187.jpg?v=1762326945"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-alysa-levene.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}