Literature About Food: Its Storied Past, Its Current Popularity

With eaters taking an interest in food extending beyond recipes, food writing is gaining a voracious audience. Food can be a character, or a source of potent metaphor. It can also tell us something important about ourselves and our society. Kansas City experts offer insights and recommendations.

Guests and their recommendations:

Cat Neville, founder, Feast Magazine

• Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
• The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten

Kaite Stover, readers services manager, The Kansas City Public Library

• Julie And Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job And Her Sanity To Master The Art Of Living by Julie Powell
• Cooked Books, a New Yorker essay by Adam Gopnick
• Secrets of the Tsil Cafe, Thomas Fox Averill

Jill Silva, food editor, The Kansas City Star, blog curator, ChowTownKC

• A Measure Of My Powers by MFK Fisher
• Books by Michael Pollan
• Looking For Umami,  a chapter from Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl
• Hometown Appetites: The Story of Clementine Paddleford by Kelly Alexander and A flower for my mother by Clementine Paddleford