{"title":"Harvey A Levenstein","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"paradox-of-plenty-book-harvey-a-levenstein-9780195055436","title":"Paradox of Plenty","description":"America has always been blessed with an abundance of food, but when it comes to the national diet, it is a land of stark contrast and paradox. In the early months of the Depression, for instance, there were 82 breadlines in New York City alone, and food riots broke out in such places as Henryetta, Oklahoma, and England, Arkansas. Yet at the same time, among those who were better-off, absurd weight-loss diets were the rage - the Pineapple-and-Lamb-Chop Diet, the \"Mayo Diet\" of raw tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs, and even a Coffee-and-Donuts Diet. Why do Americans eat what they eat? And why, in a land of plenty, do so many eat so poorly? In Paradox of Plenty, Harvey Levenstein offers a sweeping social history of food and eating in America, exploring the economic, political, and cultural factors that have shaped the American diet from 1930 to the present. Levenstein begins with the Great Depression, describing the breadlines and the slim-down diets, the era's great communal eating fests - the picnics, barbecues, fish fries, and burgoo feasts - and the wave of \"vitamania\" which swept the nation before World War II, breeding fears that the national diet was deficient in the so-called \"morale vitamin.\" He discusses wartime food rationing and the attempts of Margaret Mead and other social scientists to change American eating habits, and he examines the postwar \"Golden Age of American Food Processing, \" when Duncan Hines and other industry leaders convinced Americans that they were \"the best-fed people on Earth.\" He depicts the disillusionment of the 1960s, when Americans rediscovered hunger and attacked food processors for denutrifying the food supply, and he shows how President Kennedy helpedrevive the mystique of French food (and how Julia Child helped demystify it). Finally, he discusses contemporary eating habits, the national obsession with dieting, cholesterolphobia, \"natural\" foods, the demographics of fast-food chains, and the expanding role of food processors","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49666300969233,"sku":"GOR013765634","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51332209017105,"sku":"CIN0195055438G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51848062206225,"sku":"GOR009548061","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51850440671505,"sku":"GOR008497591","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195055438.jpg?v=1751069869"},{"product_id":"revolution-at-the-table-book-harvey-a-levenstein-9780195043655","title":"Revolution at the Table","description":"This book examines the changes in diet and food habits of Americans that took place from 1880 to 1930. The best known change was decreasing calorie intake and the increasing concern with obesity. Related to diet changes were the great social and economic forces affecting American society in these years: changing agricultural techniques, improvements in transportation and communication, industrialization, urbanization, immigration patterns, and changes in business organization. The author also focuses on new attitudes towards food - what came to be known as the New Nutrition. The book begins with American food habits in 1880 and how radically different they are today; attempts in the years before the First World War to change first the middle-class diet and then the working-class diet; changing ideas about feeding infants; changing ideas towards food in the 1920s (including Prohibition, diet fads, and the decline of conspicuous consumption of food); and finally, dietary change and the health of Americans.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346145972497,"sku":"CIN0195043650G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53146734854417,"sku":"GOR007730890","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195043650.jpg?v=1751069856"},{"product_id":"paradox-of-plenty-book-harvey-a-levenstein-9780195089189","title":"Paradox of Plenty","description":"A sweeping social history of food and eating in America, exploring the economic, political, and cultural factors that have shaped the American diet from 1930 to the present. This book is intended for those interested in US food habits and diets during the 20th century, American history, American social life and customs.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50422841835793,"sku":"CIN0195089189VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50472635531537,"sku":"CIN0195089189G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195089189.jpg?v=1751069908"},{"product_id":"seductive-journey-book-harvey-a-levenstein-9780226473765","title":"Seductive Journey","description":"This text explains why so many Americans have visited France and tells what they did when they got there. It is an examination of the transformation of American attitudes toward French food, sex and culture; as well as an exploration of changing notions of class, gender, race and nationality.It begins in 1786 when Thomas Jefferson instructed young upper-class American men to travel overseas for self-improvement rather than debauchery. Many men crossed the Atlantic to develop \"taste\" and refinement, however, the introduction of the transatlantic steamship in the mid-19th century opened France to people further down the class ladder. The text discusses how as the upper class distanced themselves from the lower class travellers, tourism in search of culture gave way to the tourism of \"conspicuous leisure\", sex and sensuality. In the 1920s, Prohibition in America and a new middle class helped make drunken sprees in Paris more enticing than trudging throught the Louvre, this text examines also the French anti-Americanism that failed to jolt the American ideal, France remaining Americans' favourite destination.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51415573496081,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51415574446353,"sku":"CIN0226473767G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/B000NXV5JE.jpg?v=1751101767"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-harvey-a-levenstein.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}