The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread - Brossura

Balinska, Maria

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0300158203 ISBN 13: 9780300158205

Casa editrice: Yale University Press, 2009

Riassunto

If smoked salmon and cream cheese bring only one thing to mind, you can count yourself among the world’s millions of bagel mavens. But few people are aware of the bagel’s provenance, let alone its adventuresome history. This charming book tells the remarkable story of the bagel’s journey from the tables of seventeenth-century Poland to the freezers of middle America today, a story of often surprising connections between a cheap market-day snack and centuries of Polish, Jewish, and American history.

 

Research in international archives and numerous personal interviews uncover the bagel’s links with the defeat of the Turks by Polish King Jan Sobieski in 1683, the Yiddish cultural revival of the late nineteenth century, and Jewish migration across the Atlantic to America. There the story moves from the bakeries of New York’s Lower East Side to the Bagel Bakers’ Local 388 Union of the 1960s, and the attentions of the mob. For all its modest size, the bagel has managed to bridge cultural gaps, rescue kings from obscurity, charge the emotions, and challenge received wisdom. Maria Balinska weaves together a rich, quirky, and evocative history of East European Jewry and the unassuming ring-shaped roll the world has taken to its heart.

 

Su questo libro

Recensione:

'Maria Balinska combines stories, history and hands-on experience with a style as brisk and toothsome as the crust of a freshly baked bagel and content as dense and flavourful as its skilfully handled dough.' Gillian Riley, author of 'The Oxford Companion to Italian Food'. --Gillian Riley

L'autore:

Maria Balinska is editor of BBC Radio’s World Current Affairs department, and a journalist and documentary maker specializing in Eastern Europe and the United States. She lives in London.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Yale University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0300158203
• ISBN 13: 9780300158205
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 240