The Food of a Younger Land - Mark Kurlansky

The economic downfall has brought a resurgence of interest in the 1930s and the history of the Great Depression. Add this to the already burgeoning interest in local food traditions and sustainable agriculture, and there’s a ready appetite for a book on the WPA-funded Federal Writer’s Project effort to document regional food culture. In The Food Of A Younger Land (Riverhead, $16), noted chronicler of historical side stories Mark Kurlansky (Salt, Cod) culled some of the project’s most interesting pieces from long-neglected Library of Congress archives. These are fascinating missives from an era before highways, freezers, and imported tropical fruit. The anthology is a culinary time-capsule, containing everything from squirrel stew recipes, a précis of the Kentucky “mint julep controversy,” and Zora Neale Hurston’s contributions, to a colorful “Oregon Protest against Mashed Potatoes.”