Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2016 -

Social history done well (unequivocally the case here) is a pleasure to read. Views of food, medicine, and societal practice confected in the cauldron of Europe's early modern period could easily, in less scholarly and competent hands, have produced a concoction intellectually difficult to digest. The author's recipe for avoiding this is simple but skillfully executed. Two initial chapters divide the period surveyed (c.1450-c.1650; c.1650-c.1800) to clarify the shifting views of diet and medicine. In brief, the revival of Galen's emphasis on dietary regimen and prevention (renascent as a result of humanism) is eventually challenged by iatrochemical (Paracelsian) and iatromechanical views emphasizing therapeutics and curative drugs. These views are, by the end of this diachronic survey, countered by a return to a dietetics again based on hygiene and prevention. With this foundation established, subsequent chapters explore the interaction of these ideas with changing views of social rank, religion, vegetarianism, beverage consumption, and the appearance of new foods and drinks associated with the Columbian exchange. It would be difficult to imagine any undergraduate student, irrespective of major, who could leave unsated from this intellectual feast.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.