Food has functioned both as a source of continuity and as a subject of adaptation in the course of human history. Onions have been a staple of the European diet since the Paleolithic era, while the orange is once again being cultivated in great quantities in Southern China, where it was originally cultivated. Other foods―such as the apple and pear in Central Asia, the tomato in Mexico, the chili pepper in South America, and rice in South Asia―remain staples of their original regions and of the world diet today.Still other items are now grown in places that would have seemed impossible in the past-bananas in geothermally heated greenhouses in Iceland, corn on the fringes of the Gobi, and tomatoes in space. But how did humans discover how to grow and consume these foods in the first place? How were they chosen over competing foods? How did they come to be so important to us? In this charming and frequently surprising compendium, Gregory McNamee gathers revelations from history, anthropology, chemistry, biology, and many other fields, and spins them into entertaining tales of discovery, complete with delicious recipes from many culinary traditions around the world.
Among the 30 types of food discussed in the course of this alphabetically-arranged work are: the apple, the banana, chocolate, coffee, corn, garlic, honey, millet, the olive, the peanut, the pineapple, the plum, rice, the soybean, the tomato, and the watermelon. All of the recipes included with these diverse food histories have been adapted for recreation in the modern kitchen.

Moveable Feasts: The History, Science, and Lore of Food

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

McNamee, Gregory

Cooking Education & Reference

Praeger

Explores the demise of the once great watercourse owing to a variety of causes such as overgrazing, inappropriate agricultural practices, groundwater overdrafting, and damming

Gila: The Life and Death of an American River

Science & Math

Earth Sciences

Crown

Food has functioned both as a source of continuity and as a subject of adaptation over the course of human history. Onions have been a staple of the European diet since the Paleolithic era; by contrast, the orange is once again being cultivated in large quantities in southern China, where it was originally grown. Other foods remain staples of their original regions as well as of the world diet at large. Still others are now grown in places that would have seemed impossible in the past—bananas in heated greenhouses in Iceland, corn on the fringes of the Gobi Desert, tomatoes on the International Space Station. But how did humans discover how to grow and incorporate these foods into their diet in the first place? How were they chosen over competing foods? In this charming and frequently surprising compendium, Moveable Feasts gathers revelations from history, anthropology, chemistry, biology, and many other fields and spins them into entertaining tales of discovery while adding more than ninety delicious recipes from various culinary traditions around the world. Among the thirty types of food discussed in the course of this alphabetically arranged work are the apple, the banana, chocolate, coffee, corn, garlic, honey, millet, the olive, the peanut, the pineapple, the plum, rice, the soybean, the tomato, and the watermelon. All the recipes accompanying these diverse food histories have been adapted for re-creation in the modern kitchen.

Moveable Feasts: The History, Science, and Lore of Food (At Table)

Bison Books

For 60 million years, the Gila River, longer than the Hudson and the Delaware combined, has shaped the ecology of the Southwest from its source in New Mexico to its confluence with the Colorado River in Arizona. This richly documented history of the Gila from its geological origins to the present was first published in 1994 and is now available only from UNM Press.

History

Americas

University of New Mexico Press

The end of the twentieth century represents an unsettled time, and the contemporary Southwest, as seen by Virgil Hancock III in these fifty-two exquisite color photographs, is a strange place full of omens and signs. His images peer beyond the scenery, beyond the tourism-council view of this region as a storied land of golf courses and climate-controlled shopping centers. He gets at the soul of the Southwest, of the nation, and, in his best photographs, at the human condition itself, seizing on the accidental symbols that speak to our yearnings and shortfalls: skyward-pointing arrows and crosses and dreams just beyond reach at Indian casinos, failed department stores, retirement cities. He photographs signs of the violence that has been endemic to the region and shows us ruins, not of the Anasazi or Spanish missions, but of commercialization, scarcely twenty years old, already gone belly-up. Hancock records decay and despair with beauty and elegance, creating a powerful and unflinching document of the post-Cold War West. In his eloquent essay, Gregory McNamee plumbs the cultural backdrop to this visual portrait, the collision of past and future, sacred and profane.

Open Range and Parking Lots: Southwest Photographs (University of Arizona Southwest Center series)

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

The end of the twentieth century represents an unsettled time, and the contemporary Southwest, as seen by Virgil Hancock III in these fifty-two exquisite color photographs, is a strange place full of omens and signs. His images peer beyond the scenery, beyond the tourism-council view of this region as a storied land of golf courses and climate-controlled shopping centers. He gets at the soul of the Southwest, of the nation, and, in his best photographs, at the human condition itself, seizing on the accidental symbols that speak to our yearnings and shortfalls: skyward-pointing arrows and crosses and dreams just beyond reach at Indian casinos, failed department stores, retirement cities. He photographs signs of the violence that has been endemic to the region and shows us ruins, not of the Anasazi or Spanish missions, but of commercialization, scarcely twenty years old, already gone belly-up. 
Hancock records decay and despair with beauty and elegance, creating a powerful and unflinching document of the post-Cold War West. In his eloquent essay, Gregory McNamee plumbs the cultural backdrop to this visual portrait, the collision of past and future, sacred and profane.

Full-color images by renowned photographers Stephen Strom and Stephen Capra unite with text by prizewinning nature and geography writer Gregory McNamee to document the subtle landscape of 1.2 million acres of remote Chihuahuan Desert grassland in southern New Mexico. Home to many species of wildlife and native plants, Otero Mesa is a place of extraordinary beauty and ecological significance faced with the increasing threat of oil and gas development that has plagued the Rocky Mountain West.
 "It is a strange and empty place, a place whose contours suggest that those who do not know it are best to leave it alone, as those who do know it will do in all events. And, as with all strange and empty places in this increasingly crowded, increasingly monocultural world, Otero Mesa is an important island in our geography of hope, a place that warrants concern and protection. Rightly, for it is very much under threat."--Gregory McNamee in Otero Mesa

Otero Mesa: Preserving America's Wildest Grassland

Photography & Video

For sixty million years, the Gila River, longer than the Hudson and the Delaware combined, has shaped the ecology of the Southwest from its source in New Mexico to its confluence with the Colorado River in Arizona. Today, for at least half its length, the Gila is dead, like so many of the West's great rivers, owing to overgrazing, damming, and other practices. This richly documented cautionary tale narrates the Gila's natural and human history. Now updated, McNamee's study traces recent efforts to resuscitate portions of this important riparian corridor.

Gila: The Life and Death of an American River, Updated and Expanded Edition

In this entertaining history, Gregory McNamee explores the many ethnic and cultural traditions that have contributed to the food of the Southwest. He traces the origins of the cuisine to the arrival of humans in the Americas, the work of the earliest farmers of Mesoamerica, and the most ancient trade networks joining peoples of the coast, plains, and mountains. From the ancient chile pepper and agave to the comparatively recent fare of sushi and Frito pie, this complex culinary journey involves many players over space and time. Born of scarcity, migration, and climate change, these foods are now fully at home in the Southwest of today--and with the "southwesternization" of the American palate at large, they are found across the globe. McNamee extends that story across thousands of years to the present, even imagining what the southwestern menu will look like in the near future.

Tortillas, Tiswin, and T-Bones: A Food History of the Southwest

The Sierra Club Desert Reader is the inaugural volume in a new series of literary celebrations of the Earth's biomes -- the major ecological communities that have shaped the collective human experience. This unprecedented, global anthology of fiction, poetry, folklore, natural history, travel commentary, and more, collected and introduced by a preeminent environmental writer, demonstrates the desert's power to enthrall and inspire our finest thinkers and writers. Represented in this distinguished volume are poets from ancient China (translated by Ezra Pound), Egyptian inscriptions, the logs of Captain James Cook, and the chilling fantasies of Edgar Allan Poe. Among other names drawn from many genres are Charles Doughty, Marco Polo, Mark Twain, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, T. E. Lawrence, Bruce Chatwin, Edith Wharton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jorge Luis Borges, as well as classic desert advocates Mary Austin, John Muir, and Edward Abbey. Avowed desert rats and the city-bound -- anyone drawn to the magical realm of open skies and space and dust -- will find The Sierra Club Desert Reader a trove of literary riches.

The Sierra Club Desert Reader

Literature & Fiction

Random House, Inc.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McNamee, Gregory. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by McNamee, Gregory

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McNamee, Gregory. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Moveable Feasts: The History, Science, and Lore of Food

Gila: The Life and Death of an American River

Moveable Feasts: The History, Science, and Lore of Food (At Table)

Gila: The Life and Death of an American River

Open Range and Parking Lots: Southwest Photographs (University of Arizona Southwest Center series)

Open Range and Parking Lots: Southwest Photographs (University of Arizona Southwest Center series)

Otero Mesa: Preserving America's Wildest Grassland

Gila: The Life and Death of an American River, Updated and Expanded Edition

Tortillas, Tiswin, and T-Bones: A Food History of the Southwest

The Sierra Club Desert Reader