From Thanksgiving to fast food to the Passover seder, Food in the USA brings together the essential readings on these topics and is the only substantial collection of essays on food and culture in the United States. Essay topics include the globalization of U.S. food; the dangers of the meatpacking industry; the rise of Italian-American food; the meaning of Soul food; the anorexia epidemic; the omnipotence of Coca-Cola; and the invention of Thanksgiving. Together, the collection provides a fascinating look at how and why we Americans are what we eat.

Acknowledgments Part I - Food and the Nation 1. Introduction: Food and the Nation, Carole M. Counihan 2. The Taste of Y2K, John L. Hess and Karen Hess 3. Eating American, Sidney Mintz 4. What Do We Eat?, Donna Gabaccia 5. The Invention of Thanksgiving: a Ritual of American Nationality, Janet Siskind 6. Future Notes: The Meal-in-a-Pill, Warren Belasco Part II - Making U.S. Food 7. The American Response to Italian Food, 1880-1930, Harvey Levenstein 8. The Origins of Soul Food in Black Urban Identity: Chicago, 1915-1947, Tracy N. Poe 9. The Nutritional Impacts of European Contact on the Omaha: A Continuing Legacy, Christiana E. Miewald 10. Consumer Culture and Participatory Democracy: The Story of Coca Cola during World War II, Mark Weiner 11. Farm Boys Don't Believe in Radicals: Rural Time and Meatpacking Workers, Deborah Fink 12. The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States, William Roseberry Part III - Complexities of Consumption 13. Islands of Serenity: Gender, Race, and Ordered Meals during World War II, Amy Bentley 14. The Passover Seder: Ritual Dynamics, Foodways, and Family Folklore, Sharon R. Sherman 15.Continuity and Change in Symptom Choice: Anorexia, Joan Jacobs Brumberg and Ruth Striegel-Moore 16. 'A Way Outa No Way': Eating Problems among African-American, Latina, and White Women, Becky Wangsgaard Thompson 17. Diabetes, Diet, and Native American Foraging Traditions, Gary Paul Nabhan 18. The Contemporary Soup Kitchen, Irene Glasser Part IV - Food Signifying Identities 19. The Signifying Dish: Autobiography and History in Two Black Women's Cookbooks, Rafia Zafar 20. 'To Eat the Flesh of His Dead Mother': Hunger, Masculinity, and Nationalism in Frank Chin's Donald Duk, Eileen Chia-Ching Fung 21. 'We Got Our Way of Cooking Things': Women, Food, and Preservation of Cultural Identity among the Gullah, Josephine Beoku-Betts 22. Food as Women's Voice in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, Carole Counihan 23. Food, Masculinity and Place in the Hispanic Southwest, James Taggart 24. Who Deserves a Break Today?: Fast Food, Cultural Rituals, and Women's Place, Kate Kane Part V - Food and the Emerging World 25. The International Political Economy of Food: A Global Crisis, Harriet Friedmann 26. China's Big Mac Attack, James L. Watson 27. NAFTA and Basic Food Production: Dependency and Marginalization on Both Sides of the US/Mexico Border, James H. McDonald 28. New Agricultural Biotechnologies: The Struggle for Democratic Choice, Gerad Middendorf, Mike Skladany, Elizabeth Ransom, and Lawrence Busch 29. Hunger in the United States: Policy Implications, Marion Nestle 30. Growing Food, Growing Community: Community Supported Agriculture in Rural Iowa, Betty L. Wells, Shelly Gradwell and Rhonda Yoder

Carole Counihan is a Professor o Anthropology and the Director of Women's Studies at Millersville University in Millersville, PA. She is currently senior editor of Foodand Foodways journal. Her previous books include Food andCulture: A Reader and The Anthropology of Food and Body, both published by Routledge.