Vegetables: A Biography
"Bloch-Dano displays here erudite command of culinary history with both literary and historical anecdotes. . . . Digesting the contents of this little book yields a trove of trivia with which to impress shoppers and vendors alike at the farmers' market."(Booklist)"This allusive, impressionistic, quintessentially French tour of the kitchen garden takes us from aphrodisiac artichokes to Zola's gritty market stalls, with many a literary and gustatory detour. Lazy summers in grandmother's garden, the frenzy for fresh winter peas that gripped the court at Versailles in 1660, the global travels of the chili pepper, the contested history of Cinderella’s pumpkin--it's all here, and it's all fun."(Jane S. Smith, author of The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Busines)