A Book A Week - Week 17: White Bread

This week's book:
    White Bread   by  Aaron Bobrow-Strain

Grade:   B+

It's become an insult, 'white bread,' and it's become insulting, food that isn't really food.  If you think white bread you think Jerry Springer, you think Wal-Mart, you think lowbrow, beer-swilling, toilet-on-the-front-lawn kind of folks.  But it wasn't always that way.

This book examines the relationship Americans have with the commercial white bread loaf, from the beginning back even into the mid-Nineteenth Century up to the modern day.  I was drawn to this book because in the opening pages the author wonders whether the white bread we eat today, with all its chemicals and synthetic ingredients could even really be said to be food any more.  It's a sentiment that I've expressed often, and nothing makes a person like someone else more than being agreed with.
    Also, the author finds a strong strain of white elitism in the foodie movement, in those people who shop at Whole Foods and local farmers' markets and congratulate themselves for it, and who believe with what conviction they can muster that if only the unwashed masses could be convinced to behave exactly like their betters the listing ship of America would right itself.  I've noticed this myself - I've shopped at Whole Foods and still try to find farmers' markets - where instead of seeing community I see a whole lot of other people who look just like me.  Nobody talks to anybody else and you're just as likely to see award-winning guacamole and gourmet cookies as you are fresh carrots.  So I'm with the author here.

Matter of fact, I agree with the author on almost everything he puts forth in this book.  It's meticulously researched, and he meshes bread-baking ideas and trends across decades expertly, following changes and evolution in American dietary habits and social consciousness like a detective tracking twists and turns in a murder mystery.  He finds social and political influence in the public's attitudes towards white bread, and ties those influences into the subsequent trends in politics and social movements.  It's a book that took years to research and years to write.

It's a very, very well-done book, probably the standard by which other such research will be measured in years to come.
    So why the B+?

It's just so dry.   Dry like a day-old baguette.

The past several non-fiction books I've reviewed I've graded A or higher.  These were books written either by journalists who write for public consumption every day, or by a professor who's particularly adept at turning crazy complicated ideas into something non-mathematicians can understand.  'White Bread' is written by an academic, currently engaged in academia, and it shows.  Dr. Bobrow-Strain, PhD, writes well, and he writes concisely, and he writes completely.  But he doesn't write in a particularly entertaining fashion.  He's not grabbing headlines, he's defending his research.   His job is to be a professor, and this book reflects that; about 20% of the book is end notes and an index.

I would recommend this book to anyone* interested in modern food movements: locavores, raw foods, gluten-free, what have you.  You'll find that you're not so trend-setting as you wish you were, Americans have been advocating your agendas for over one-hundred years.  I'd also recommend this book to any executive in Big Food, because you'll see that we know what you're doing and why you're doing it.  And knowing is half the battle.   I'd also recommend this to anyone who likes a solidly-researched non-fiction book, who is also not bothered so much by books that are half-textbook. 

Next week:
   Ready Player One   by  Ernest Cline
   I'm moving into modern sci-fi and leaving the old school behind.  Hope it doesn't suck.

* mostly well-off white folks, don't pretend it's not true