New Books in Food

Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal (Routledge, 2025) by Ishita Dey is an ethnographic work on excess. Based on a decade-long fieldwork of a single food substance – sweets – it follows sweet-making in sweetshops, domestic spaces, fairs, festivals and its representation in recipe books to understand how caste, religion, science and law inform the life of a food item with an extremely short shelf life. It shows how food items of conspicuous consumption find a meaning in everyday lives of people through its socio-cultural meanings – ritual, pride of craftsmanship, heritage and cultural identity. It also shows how sweets continue to be a ubiquitous part of ‘Bengali’ diet in a geography that has been witness to acute hunger, starvation, food movements and social welfare programmes to ensure food security. As a multi-sited ethnography on sweetness in diverse settings and its associated meanings in West Bengal and Bangladesh, this book explores everyday workplace hierarchies between artisans that reveal how caste and religion inform the choice of who is hired into this line of work. It also highlights how discourses on food safety and the overpowering presence of World Trade Organization have affected the life of the Bengali mishti. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of ethnography, sociology, history and South Asian studies. And if you, dear reader, love mishti, you will love this, too!Satyaki Barua is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Hyderabad. His research focuses on party organisation, party institutionalisation, and political mobilisation, particularly examining the interactions between the state, society, and political parties in India and South Asia. Outside of academia, Satyaki enjoys watching and discussing movies, as well as practising Hindustani classical music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Are you a Comté connoisseur or does your heart belong to Rogue River Blue? Can you tell your Brie from your Camembert? Can you name an award-winning Indian cheese and would you recognise a cheese iron? If you take your cheese seriously then One Cheese to Rule Them All: In Search of the World's 100 Best Cheeses (Murdoch Books, 2025) is the companion you need to live your best cheese life. World Cheese Awards judges Patrick McGuigan and Carlos Yescas have a wealth of knowledge garnered from years of travelling and tasting. One Cheese to Rule Them All is a distillation of that experience through 100 cheese profiles that have won awards over the years, offering charming geekery against a backdrop of the people, places and history that define these world-class cheeses. You'll learn how cheese is made, what to drink with each cheese, its World Cheese Awards status, its texture and taste, and lots more to help you choose your cheese more wisely and enjoy it even more. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Taco (Bloomsbury, 2025) is a deep dive into the most iconic Mexican food from the perspective of a Mexico City native. In a narrative that moves from Mexico to the United States and back, Dr. Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado discusses the definition of the taco, the question of the tortilla and the taco shell, and the existence of the taco as a modern social touchstone that has been shaped by history and geography.  Challenging the idea of centrality and authenticity, in this latest addition to the Object Lessons series, Dr. Sánchez Prado shows instead that the taco is a contemporary, transcultural food that has always been subject to transformation. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Ines Prodöhl’s Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900-1950 (Routledge, 2023) is a history of how, why, and where the soybean became a critical ingredient in industry and agriculture in the first half of the twentieth century. Focusing on Japanese-dominated Manchuria, Germany, and the United States, Prodöhl shows that the soybean was a serendipitous solution to numerous and varied crises from the beginning of the century into the post-WWII decades. This story of imperialism, globalization, and technology begins in northeast China, the world’s soy cultivation center until the 1940s. It takes us to Germany, the number one importer of soybeans in the interwar period, and illuminates the various ways in which soy was integrated into the economy especially after the end of WWI as both an invaluable oilseed for industry and a source of protein-rich fodder for agriculture. Finally, Prodöhl explores how the United States first adopted the soybean mostly as a solution to overtaxed soils. Mixing economic, ecological, political, and technological/scientific history with a keen sense of the materiality of soy as a global product, Globalizing the Soybean is an accessible and enlightening book that will appeal to multiple audiences. This book is available open access here. This episode was recorded in person in the studios of Media City Bergen with technical assistance from Frode Ims. Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Sweet potatoes were among the American crops Christopher Columbus brought back to Europe—where they were thought to be an aphrodisiac. In China, this versatile root became a staple that fueled rapid population growth. Introduced to Japan to stave off famine, sweet potatoes later sustained the country’s imperial expansion. Because this hardy plant can thrive in almost any soil, it has long been cultivated as a subsistence crop in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Oceania. In recent years, Western health experts have begun touting the humble sweet potato as a “superfood” with numerous nutritional benefits. Considering these events and many others, Staple to Superfood: A Global History of the Sweet Potato (Columbia UP, 2025) explores the sweet potato’s rich history and remarkable global influence. Dr. Q. Edward Wang demonstrates how this resilient root has not only nourished communities but also defined their identities. Tracing its journeys through the intricate networks of global trade and cultural exchange, he shows how the sweet potato transformed agricultural practices, culinary traditions, and social structures worldwide. From the Americas to Europe to Asia and the Pacific, the spread of this crop illuminates the varied paths that global development has taken. Dr. Wang also contrasts the sweet potato with its botanically unrelated namesake, the white potato. Blending agricultural, cultural, and historical perspectives, Staple to Superfood offers a fresh look at the power of food to transform societies. It is a compelling exploration of how the sweet potato shaped the modern world and continues to influence global food systems today. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

From whiskey in the American Revolution to Spam in WWII, food reveals a great deal about the society in which it exists. Selecting 15 foods that represent key moments in the history of the United States, this book takes readers from before European colonization to the present, narrating major turning points along the way, with food as a guide. US History in 15 Foods (Bloomsbury, 2023) takes everyday items like wheat bread, peanuts, and chicken nuggets, and shows the part they played in the making of America. What did the British colonists think about the corn they observed Indigenous people growing? How are oranges connected to Roosevelt's New Deal? And what can green bean casserole tell us about gender roles in the mid-20th century? Weaving food into colonialism, globalization, racism, economic depression, environmental change and more, Anna Zeide shows how America has evolved through the food it eats. Anna Zeide is Associate Professor of History and the founding director of the Food Studies Program in the College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, USA. She has previously written Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry (2018), which won a 2019 James Beard Media Award, and co-edited Acquired Tastes: Stories about the Origins of Modern Food (2021). Twitter. Website.  Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Travel to virtually any African country and you are likely to find a Coca-Cola, often a cold one at that. Bottled asks how this carbonated drink became ubiquitous across the continent, and what this reveals about the realities of globalisation, development and capitalism. Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Sara Byala is the first assessment of the social, commercial and environmental impact of one of the planet's biggest brands and largest corporations, in Africa. Dr. Byala charts the company's century-long involvement in everything from recycling and education to the anti-apartheid struggle, showing that Africans have harnessed Coca-Cola in varied expressions of modernity and self-determination: this is not a story of American capitalism running amok, but rather of a company becoming African, bending to consumer power in ways big and small. In late capitalism, everyone's fates are bound together. A beverage in Atlanta and a beverage in Johannesburg pull us all towards the same end narrative. This story matters for more than just the local reasons, enhancing our understanding of our globalised, integrated world. Drawing on fieldwork and research in company archives, Dr. Byala asks a question for our time: does Coca-Cola's generative work offset the human and planetary costs associated with its growth in the twenty-first century? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Breakfast Cereal: A Global History (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Kathryn Dolan presents the long, distinguished and surprising history of breakfast cereal. Simple, healthy and comforting, breakfast cereals are a perennially popular way to start the day around the world. They have a long, distinguished and surprising history – around 10,000 years ago, with the advent of agriculture, people began breaking their fast with porridges made from wheat, rice, corn and other grains. It was only in the second half of the nineteenth century, however, in the United States, that a series of entrepreneurs and food reformers created the breakfast cereals we recognize today: Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Cheerios and Quaker Oats, among others. In this global, entertaining and well-illustrated account, Dr. Dolan explores the history of breakfast cereals, including many historical and modern recipes that the reader can try at home. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

In this episode of New Books Network, Laura Goldberg speaks with Thomas David DuBois, Professor at Beijing Normal University, about his book China in Seven Banquets, which traces Chinese history through seven extraordinary meals. Gastronomy and dining rituals offer a revealing historical framework: they make visible social order, ethical values, and political power, expressed through ingredients, preparation, display, and etiquette. DuBois shares stories of early ritual feasts shaped by Confucian thought and of vast imperial banquets with hundreds of dishes – diving into fermented meat sauces, courtly excess, and the arrival of new foods via the Silk Road. Conversation also turns to the modern period, considering the globalization of Chinese cuisine and the circulation of foreign foods within China. A feast from film – in the opening sequence of cult classic Eat, Drink, Man, Woman – is explored, as is the potential of food security impacting China’s culinary future. In addition, DuBois shares how he recreated dozens of traditional recipes using modern kitchen techniques – all of which he includes in the book for the intrepid home cook. Thoughtful and engaging, the discussion invites listeners to see meals not simply as nourishment, but as moments where culture, power, and history come together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

In Food, Heresies, and Magical Boundaries in the Middle Ages (Amsterdam UP, 2024) by Dr. Andrea Maraschi & Dr. Francesca Tasca, readers will find stories about medieval heresies and “magic” from an unusual perspective: that of food studies. The time span ranges from Late Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages, while the geographical scope includes regions as different as North Africa, Spain, Ireland, continental Europe, the Holy land, and Central Asia. Food, heresies, and magical boundaries in the Middle Ages explores the power of food in creating and breaking down boundaries between different groups, or in establishing a contact with other worlds, be they the occult sides of nature, or the supernatural. The book emphasizes the role of food in crafting and carrying identity, and in transferring virtues and powers of natural elements into the eater’s body. Which foods and drinks made someone a heretic? Could they be purified? Which food offerings forged a connection with the otherworld? Which recipes allowed gaining access to the hidden powers within nature? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

This episode features a conversation with the inspiring Dr. Veronica House, whose book Local Organic: Food Rhetorics and Community Writing for Impact (Utah State University Press, 2025) explores how writing takes shape within community networks. House brings a generous scholarly voice to questions of writing, community partnership, and meaningful collaboration, and this episode offers a chance to hear how her ideas grew from years of work alongside the people who shaped the project. From Dr. House’s faculty bio:  Veronica House is Associate Professor of the Practice and Director of the Writing Center at Boston College. She is the author of Local Organic: Food Rhetorics and Community Writing for Impact (2025) and Medea's Chorus: Myth and 20th Century Women's Poetry Since 1950 (2014). Veronica's recent teaching, community work, and scholarship focus on food movements, community-engaged writing, and writing as a force for social change. Veronica is Founding Director of the Conference on Community Writing and Founding Executive Director of the Coalition for Community Writing. She consults with faculty at colleges and universities across the country to design community-engaged courses and programs. Veronica is recipient of Campus Compact's Engaged Scholar Award; University of Colorado's Women Who Make A Difference Award; and numerous teaching awards. She serves as Consulting Editor of the Community Literacy Journal. ABOUT THE BOOK: In Local Organic, Veronica House explores ways to collaboratively build resilient local food systems and coalitions across disciplines and communities. Framed by a study of language, power, and food both nationally and in Boulder, Colorado, the book offers teachers, organizers, activists, and scholars ideas and examples for building interdisciplinary and intercommunity coalitional ecologies through writing in a methodology for engagement that the author calls ecological community writing. Based on more than a decade of research, teaching, writing, and project-building with undergraduate writing students and project partners, House theorizes how work to encourage local community-based writing becomes an ecological thread connecting things, ideas, and people. Local Organic is a book about collaboratively building community-derived definitions for resilient local food systems and how faculty and students can work to ethically partner with local communities using distributed definition building.Local Organic offers writing and rhetoric faculty and graduate students an ecological methodology to produce, teach, and theorize writing to help communities engage with a wide array of social issues and to work toward individual and community-level impacts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Exploring the entangled relationships between food, culture and society in India, this edited collection Food, Culture and Society in India: Social, Political, Economic and Cultural Perspectives (Berghahn Books, 2025) brings together empirically grounded research across diverse regions and contexts. Organised into four sections – Food, Culture and Identity; Food, Memory and Migration; Food, Livelihood and Nutrition; and Food, Consumption and Media – it highlights the complex role food plays in shaping identity, mobility, labour and representation. Drawing from a range of disciplinary perspectives, the volume contributes to broader conversations in sociology, social anthropology, international development, geography, cultural studies and food studies, offering a textured account of contemporary foodways and their significance in everyday Indian life. Dr. Tiatemsu Longkumer, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan, researches indigenous religion and Christianity among the Nagas, Buddhism in Bhutan, and Generative AI in education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Ancient Jewish Food in its Geographical and Cultural Contexts: What’s Cooking in the Talmuds? (Taylor & Francis, 2025) is the first in-depth study of food in talmudic literature in its geographical and cultural contexts. It demonstrates the sharing of foods and foodways between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbours in the Near East in Late Antiquity. Using both ancient written sources and archaeological evidence, this book sets the foods of the Mishnah and Palestinian Talmud in their Graeco-Roman context, and the foods of the Babylonian Talmud and the ge’onim in their Persian and Arab contexts. It explores practices of food preparation and their contribution to the ancient diet, as well as analysing the relationships between food, status and culture. The rabbinical authors of talmudic literature were more concerned with everyday food than were aristocratic Classical authors; by examining both talmudic sources and archaeological finds, this book paints a new picture of the diet, lifestyle and culture of ordinary people. Ancient Jewish Food in Its Geographical and Cultural Contexts will interest Food Historians as well as students and scholars of Jewish Studies, particularly the period of the Mishnah and Talmud, as well as those dealing with the wider social and cultural history of the Ancient Near East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Bradley Borougerdi joins Jana Byars to talk about Cannabis: A Global History (Reaktion, 2025). An international cultural history of the multifunctional plant. Cannabis explores the historical, pharmacological, and cultural significance of the controversial plant. Beginning with cannabis's origins as a food source in Southeast Asia, Borougerdi describes the global evolution of cannabis over the centuries, with a particular focus on its spread across the Atlantic and its modern renaissance in cuisine. The book also investigates the stimulant's mood-altering forms of consumption, from smoking to edibles and drinks. A richly illustrated guide, this book draws together a diverse account of international cannabis cultures in a single, captivating narrative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuisine. The tomato brought together domestic consumers, cookbook readers, and home cooks through a shared culinary culture that sometimes transcended differences of class, region, gender, and ethnicity—and sometimes reinforced them. In Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato (U California Press, 2025), Dr. Anny Gaul shows how Egyptians' embrace of the tomato and the emergence of Egypt's modern national identity were both driven by the modernization of the country's food system. Drawing from cookbooks, archival materials, oral histories, and vernacular culture, Dr. Gaul follows this commonplace food into the realms of domestic policy and labor through the hands of Egypt's overwhelmingly female home cooks. As they wrote recipes and cooked meals, these women forged key aspects of public culture that defined how Egyptians recognized themselves and one another as Egyptian. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Today I talked to Meg Bernhard about her new book Wine (Bloomsbury, 2023). Agricultural product and cultural commodity, drink of ritual and drink of addiction, purveyor of pleasure, pain, and memory - wine has never been contained in a single glass. Drawing from science, religion, literature, and memoir, Wine meditates on the power structures bound up with making and drinking this ancient, intoxicating beverage. While wine drunk millennia ago was the humble beverage of the people, today the drink is inextricable with power, sophistication, and often wealth. Bottles sell for half a million dollars. Point systems tell us which wines are considered the best. Wine professionals give us the language to describe what we taste. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Our insatiable appetite for creativity in the kitchen – or around the open fire – is reflected in the fascinating array of objects explored in this book. Authored by food writer Jenny Linford in consultation with curators from the British Museum, Repast: The Story of Food (Thames & Hudson in partnership with the British Museum, 2025) focuses on artefacts in the museum’s collections – from ancient clay cooking vessels to exquisite gold goblets – spanning Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Australasia, from prehistory to the present day. Arranged into thirteen broad themes such as Hunting, Alcohol, Religion, Feasting and Eating Out, with lavish plates accompanying absorbing essays on subjects including tea (the world’s most consumed drink after water), pork (the world’s most widely consumed meat), and wheat (the source of 20% of the world’s human calorie consumption), Repast conveys the extraordinary global story of food, drink and the culinary arts. This clearly structured, beautifully illustrated book will engage and delight the growing audience interested in the history of food and drink. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Chef Pyet DeSpain joins the New Books Network to discuss her new cookbook, Rooted in Fire: A Celebration of Native American and Mexican Cooking (HarperOne, 2025). Drawing from her Potawatomi and Mexican heritage, DeSpain shares recipes that connect past and present, including bison meatballs with Wojape BBQ sauce, raspberry mezcal quail, and poblano-corn tamales. Each dish reflects her effort to preserve tradition while creating something new. In this conversation, Pyet talks about growing up between two cultures and how understanding their shared roots changed her approach to food and identity. She reflects on rediscovering ancestral ingredients, the meaning of her tribe’s “keeper of the fire” role, and the importance of gratitude and ceremony in her cooking. She also speaks about the family members, chefs, friends and home cooks who inspire her to keep Native American and Mexican foodways alive, ensuring that these traditions continue to be seen, shared, and celebrated. Interview by Laura Goldberg, longtime food blogger at here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Beloved baker and five-time James Beard Award winner Dorie Greenspan joins the New Books Network to discuss her new cookbook, Dorie’s Anytime Cakes (Harvest, 2025), a warm, inviting collection designed to slip easily into everyday life. From celebration-worthy showstoppers to simple loaves meant for sharing over coffee, Greenspan’s latest book distills decades of experience into recipes. In this conversation, Dorie talks with host Laura Goldberg about how her life between New York, Connecticut, and Paris has shaped her sensibility as both a home baker and a recipe writer. She reflects on the cultural differences she has observed in American and French kitchens, their attitudes toward time, technique, and pleasure, and how these contrasts surface in cakes like her Franco-American Banana Bread, a recipe that bridges two culinary worlds. Dorie shares the cookbooks and culinary mentors who have most influenced her craft, as well as the joy of collaborating with a design team whose work helps the book feel lively, inviting, and full of personality. The episode also explores the book’s recipe inspirations, including holiday-ready desserts like the Thanksgiving Cake with its sweet potatoes, maple, and marshmallow frosting, and the Cocoa-Swirled Pumpkin Bundt, which links late autumn to winter festivities. She also explains her chapter on Salty Cakes, a playful reimagining of what a cake can be. Recipes such as the Harissa-Lemon Loaf and the Seaweed and Furikake Muffins show how savory ingredients can transform familiar forms into something surprising, satisfying, and perfect for lunch, snacks, or aperitif hour. Interview by Laura Goldberg, longtime food blogger here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

How did China’s Nationalists feed their armies during the long war against Japan? In her new book, Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China’s Total War, 1937-1945 (Cambridge UP, 2025), Jennifer Yip (National University of Singapore) looks at China’s military grain systems from field to frontline. Yip examines the bureaucratic processes and deeply human stories of requisitioning, transporting, and storing grain in Nationalist-held China. This forensic look at food helps readers rethink the geographies, timings and burdens of China’s war of resistance – as well as the meanings of total war itself. By uncoupling ‘total war’ from images of industrialised warfare, Grains of Conflict shows how China’s war with Japan mobilized the labor and resources of Chinese society on a total scale. In this interview, Yip explores the achievements and difficulties of Nationalist grain mobilization and discusses how the long conflict in China became a multi-sided ‘struggle for food’ – with devastating results. Grains of Conflict is highly recommended for anyone interested in modern Chinese history and the history of war in the twentieth century. Host: Mark Baker is lecturer (assistant professor) in East Asian history at the University of Manchester, UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food