Award-winning food writer Bee Wilson’s secret history of kitchens, showing how new technologies—from the fork to the microwave and beyond—have fundamentally shaped how and what we eat.**“Like having a long dinner table discussion with a fascinating friend ... A pure joy to read.” —**Los Angeles Times**"Delightful ... [An] ebulliently written and unobtrusively learned survey." -**Harper's MagazineSi...

We are not born knowing what to eat; as omnivores it is something we each have to figure out for ourselves. From childhood onward, we learn how big a "portion" is and how sweet is too sweet. We learn to enjoy green vegetables -- or not. But how does this education happen? What are the origins of taste?In First Bite, award-winning food writer Bee Wilson draws on the latest research from food psychologists, neuroscientists, and nutritionists to reveal that our food habits ar...

**One NPR's Books We Love • One of Waterstones' Best Books of the Year“Heart-wrenching and heartwarming in equal measure. No one is so good at capturing the everyday magic of kitchens, cooking, and life as Bee Wilson.” —Letitia Clark, author of Bitter Honey**One August day, months after her marriage abruptly ended, a heart-shaped baking tin fell at Bee Wilson’s feet: the same one she had used to bake her wedding cake twenty-three years prior. This discover...

An award-winning food writer takes us on a global tour of what the world eats--and shows us how we can change it for the betterFood is one of life's great joys. So why has eating become such a source of anxiety and confusion?Bee Wilson shows that in two generations the world has undergone a massive shift from traditional, limited diets to more globalized ways of eating, from bubble tea to quinoa, from Soylent to meal kits.Paradoxically, our diets ar...

An award-winning food writer takes us on a global tour of what the world eats--and shows us how we can change it for the betterFood is one of life's great joys. So why has eating become such a source of anxiety and confusion?Bee Wilson shows that in two generations the world has undergone a massive shift from traditional, limited diets to more globalized ways of eating, from bubble tea to quinoa, from Soylent to meal kits.Paradoxically, our diets ar...

The humble peanut butter and jelly or bologna and cheese or corned beef on rye—no matter your cooking expertise, chances are you’ve made and eaten countless sandwiches in your lifetime. It’s quick, it’s simple, and it’s open to infinite variety and inventiveness. If there’s something bread- or bun-like in your cupboard, there is a sandwich waiting to happen.Though sandwiches are a near-universal food, their origin can be traced to a very precise historical figure: John Montagu, the...

Bad food has a history. Swindled tells it. Through a fascinating mixture of cultural and scientific history, food politics, and culinary detective work, Bee Wilson uncovers the many ways swindlers have cheapened, falsified, and even poisoned our food throughout history. In the hands of people and corporations who have prized profits above the health of consumers, food and drink have been tampered with in often horrifying ways--padded, diluted, contaminated, substituted, mislabeled...

**One of The New Yorker's Fifteen Essential Cookbooks • A New York Times, WBUR Here & Now, and National Post Best Cookbook of 2023 • An NPR 2023 "Books We Love" Pick • One of the Guardian UK's Five Best Food Books of 2023A culinary companion to simplify cooking while making it more enjoyable, The Secret of Cooking is packed with solutions for how to make life in the kitchen work better for you, whether you’re cooking for yoursel...

Ever since men first hunted for honeycomb in rocks and daubed pictures of it on cave walls, the honeybee has been seen as one of the wonders of nature: social, industrious, beautiful, terrifying. No other creature has inspired in humans an identification so passionate, persistent, or fantastical.The Hive recounts the astonishing tale of all the weird and wonderful things that humans believed about bees and their "society" over the ages. It ranges from the honey delta of anc...

Award-winning food writer Bee Wilson’s secret history of kitchens, showing how new technologies—from the fork to the microwave and beyond—have fundamentally shaped how and what we eat.**“Like having a long dinner table discussion with a fascinating friend ... A pure joy to read.” —**Los Angeles Times**"Delightful ... [An] ebulliently written and unobtrusively learned survey." -**Harper's MagazineSi...

One August day, months after her marriage abruptly ended, a heart-shaped baking tin fell at Bee Wilson’s feet: the same one she had used to bake her wedding cake twenty-three years prior. This discovery struck a wave of emotions that propelled her search for others who have attached magical and personal properties to the objects in their kitchens.Wilson’s bestselling Consider the Fork explored how kitchen items changed the way we eat; in The Heart-Shaped Tin, she ...