25 Books You Can't Put Down

The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

416 pages; Riverhead

The Food of a Younger Land (Riverhead), edited and illustrated with woodcuts by Mark Kurlansky, is a banquet of stories and traditional recipes collected in the 1930s for the Federal Writers' Project by the likes of Eudora Welty and Nelson Algren, who journeyed across the land to sniff out what and how Americans ate. Indiana Persimmon Pudding, Depression Cake from the Far West—savory concoctions for a hungry time.

First chapter: Read an excerpt from The Food of a Younger Land