Here's a link to Kaufman on today's Washington Journal.
MY LATEST BOOK
Pre-order your copy of Bet the Farm now. Out October 2012. “This story should have been on the front page of the New York Times.”
– Jami Floyd, Political Analyst, MSNBC “It’s on the reading list for my NYU classes.”
– Marion Nestle, author of Why Calories Count and Food Politics “'Eating is an agricultural act,’ as Wendell Berry said, but Frederick Kaufman shows, undeniably, that it is an economic act as well.”
– Dan Barber, chef, author, activist “Kaufman makes a convincing and terrifying case that the same merchant bankers who destroyed our housing market–and economy–five years ago are at it again. This time their target is the world’s food supply.”
– Barry Estabrook, author of Tomatoland
Now available in paperback.
Winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Award, "Best Culinary History Book, 2008."
A Short History of the American Stomach
The extremes of American eating—our urge to stuff and to starve ourselves—are easy to blame on the excesses of modern living. But, we’ve been this way all along. From the secret history of Puritan purges to interviews with Amish black-market raw-milk dealers, this is the story of America told by way of the American stomach. "Kaufman’s witty historical analysis will be a treat for anyone interested in food."
- Time Out New York "For the foodie on your gift list."
- Zagat.com "A hip, journalistic approach to America's all-consuming relationship to the gut, from Puritan rituals of fasting to the creation of the Food Network."
- Publisher's Weekly "Brilliant. Original. Inspirational."
- NPR's Kitchen Sisters “Gourmets and gourmands alike will savor Kaufman’s keen, caustic anatomy of the American palate.”
—Kirkus Reviews “Who knew that Cotton Mather was America’s first food faddist or Benjamin Franklin our founding foodie? I loved every chapter of Kaufman’s book. American history has never been so much fun.”
—Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat “A Short History of the American Stomach gives us something fresh, mixing erudition and passion with a tempered, lean, accurate prose that never misses its beats and never compromises a witty economy of style. Petronius would be proud.”
—Lawrence Osborne, author of The Accidental Connoisseur “Kaufman makes brilliant use of humor and history to expose American's bipolar relationship with food. This is the book to read if you want to understand why, generation after generation, we doggedly persist in dividing edibles into good and bad, healthy and deadly, alternately stuffing then depriving ourselves, worshiping processed foods one year and organic the next, ad nauseam.”
—Barry Glassner, author of The Gospel of Food
OTHER BOOKS
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009
Includes "Wasteland"Slice of Life: Contemporary Writers on Food
Includes "The Triumph of American Gastrosophy," a piece I wrote about the history of American diet book mania.- Everything That Lives, Eats
I wrote the lead essay for this collection of food photography. - About Men: Reflections on the Male Experience
I'm in this anthology - Frederick Kaufman: Forty-Two Days and Nights on the Iberian Peninsula With Anis Ladron
Frederick Kaufman: Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Photographs and Memories
January 05, 2013
January 03, 2013
Furious Debate on BBC
Quite the argument I had on this BBC global hunger special. Jim Rogers, ex-Soros partner, a highly successful investor who took the other side of the question over whether or not Wall Street is driving up the price of global food.
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December 21, 2012
Water Futures Wins Award
Nature Magazine has cited "Wall Street's Street's Thirst" as one of their comment pieces of the year.
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December 20, 2012
Genetically Monetized Food
The best way to stop Monsanto? Stop their profit stream. Here's how, from Slate . . .
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December 17, 2012
Spinning Wheat Into Gold
Great profile just out from UTNE Reader. Sample:
“I was having a conversation with my editor at Harper’s, Luke Mitchell,” Kaufman recounts over the phone, “and we were talking about what we would do now that we had written so much about food. The idea then was broached that maybe it was time to write about not enough food and that in fact we might get back to the whole notion of a billion hungry people on earth. Get back to it in the sense that this had been a rather hot topic in journalistic circles and popular conversation in the 1960s and 1970s, and then had gone away. We were trying to figure out why that had happened.”
Read more: http://www.utne.com/politics/bet-the-farm-zm0z13jfzlin.aspx#ixzz2FM6Ty3rQ
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November 24, 2012
Pollan on Financialization
Straight from the #michaelpollan twitter feed:
"First shelter, now food: how financialization of food is causing bubbles and busts--hunger. Don't miss this new book."
And a link to Amazon. What more could a I ask?
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November 20, 2012
Food Politics Goes Long on Bet the Farm
Marion Nestle's great blog, foodpolitics.com, has honored Bet the Farm as one of her "Food Books Worth Blurbing." Thank you, Marion!
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November 09, 2012
Food Republic Casts A Vote
Marcus Samuelsson's site just tagged Bet the Farm as a "Book to Devour."
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November 07, 2012
Tea in Hudson
If you happen to be passing through the loveliness of Columbia County in upstate NY this weekend, would be great to see you in Hudson, 6:00 Saturday, for some tea and talk about Bet the Farm. Details . . .
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November 05, 2012
Food and Money
UTNE Reader just came through with an excerpt from Bet the Farm, in which Yaneer Bar-Yam, of the New England Complex Systems Institute, addresses a seminar room packed with agricultural biggies at Davos. The subject: Financializatin of the system . . .
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Frederick Kaufman
- The food journalist who went looking for a slice of pizza and ended up on Wall Street.
I have written about American food culture and other subjects for Harper's Magazine, the New Yorker, Gourmet, Gastronomica, and the New York Times Magazine, among others. I've been a freelancer for years, and published something like one-hundred magazine articles, along with four books. I'm a contributing editor at Harper's, and teach at the City University of New York and CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism. Born in LA, I live in New York.
Follow Me
ARTICLES
MEDIA
- TEDxManhattan - The Measure of All Things
TEDxManhattan April 26, 2011 - Soaring Food Prices
My appearance on MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show. - The Food Bubble: How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It
Video from my appearance on Democracy Now July 16, 2010. - Did Wall Street Cause a Food Bubble?
Audio from NPR's Here & Now. - CUNY TV
Kaufman discusses fat parades, artificial oysters, gastroporn and his beginnings as a food writer. - WREG-TV Memphis
Appearance on "Live at 9" morning show. - The Commonwealth Club
Video from my California reading on Feb. 22. - Seattle NPR
- The Leonard Lopate Show
2/1/08: On WNYC. - On Point
WBUR's Tom Ashbrook and I talk about "the most fashionable pukes" of American history and other subjects.
SCHOLARLY
- The Enteric Terrors of Washington Irving
This article first appeared in Gastronomica
DOCUMENTARY FILMS
Fastpitch
I wrote the script for this documentary on fast-pitch softball.