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Harvey Levenstein's book, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, traces the social history of food, nutrition, and eating in America from 1930 to 1992. Levenstein covers a broad range of economic, political, cultural, and scientific forces and events relating to food and Americans' relationship(s) with food from the Great Depression to the Reagan-Bush era. The book is organized into 16 chapters that chronologically describe events, people, trends, and broad social developments from "Depression Dieting and the Vitamin Gold Rush" in chapter 1 to "Fast Foods and Quick Bucks" and "Paradoxes of Plenty" in chapters 15 and 16.
Levenstein writes as a historian, relying primarily on sources in the general print news media (e.g., The New York Times), food-related periodicals, public documents, and popular books and less often on professional journals and industry reports. The volume is heavily documented, with more than 1,400 footnotes and bibliographic citations provided to support the text Many of the references, particularly for the earlier chapters, are necessarily quite obscure.
Paradox of Plenty contains discussions of many issues that will intrigue those working in the consumer field. They include the interface between scientists and corporate sponsors, gender roles in home and workplace with respect to food, how advertisers direct their appeals to current trends, and the politics and activism of public food assistance programs.
No subject matter is sacred in this book. Levenstein seems to continually poke fun at the fickle nature of our cultural beliefs, politics, economics, and scientific and...