What’s on Your Bookshelf?
Instruction guide. History textbook. Anthropology encyclopedia. Health manual. Geography lesson. Where can you find information this diverse, spanning this many fields, in a single tome? Cookbooks. Cookbooks rarely contain simply recipes—many also contain great information about culinary history, geography, anthropology, and agriculture. Even without the recipes, the meals we cook become part of a greater cultural story, laying the groundwork for future memories. In that way, cookbooks are as important as literature for marking a moment in time and reflecting a society’s values, habits, and daily life. What we put in our bodies impacts how we feel and how we perform; accordingly, cookbooks are also how-to instruction manuals guiding us toward pleasure and toward—or away from—achieving health. In the case of these vegan cookbooks, the direction is ultimate health, and…
