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The World on a Plate: A Sweeping Global History Told Through the Meals People Ate in War, Weddings, Funerals, Markets, Temples, Palaces, Prisons, and
Paperback
Food WritingAnthropologyGeneral World History
Publisher: Old Lantern House Books
Published: Jun 10 2026
Pages: 134
Weight: 0.42
Height: 0.31 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
History is rarely told through the food people ate.
Yet every meal contains a story.
From the first bread baked fourteen thousand years ago to the global dinner table of today, The World on a Plate explores the extraordinary history hidden behind ordinary meals.
Inside, readers will discover:
- The world's earliest known bread makers
- How bread and beer helped build ancient Egypt
- Why food offerings connected the living and the dead
- The bustling street food markets of Pompeii
- The crops that transformed the world after 1492
- The rise of coffeehouses and dangerous conversation
- Wedding feasts, royal banquets, funeral foods, prison meals, wartime rations, and migrant kitchens
This is not a cookbook.
It is a sweeping human history of memory, survival, empire, faith, grief, celebration, hunger, power, and belonging, told through the meals people ate.
Perfect for readers of food history, world history, cultural history, social history, archaeology, anthropology, and narrative nonfiction.
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