Customs & Traditions Books - Page 4

Food And Culture: A Reader

Counihan Carole

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Interesting collection. 5 out of 5 stars.
22 of 23 people found this review helpful.

Food and culture are examined in 28 essays by noted anthropologists and other social scientists in this uneven but valuable survey.
Reading some of the academese is like treading molasses, but the collection is redeemed by such gems as Brumberg's examination of the Victorian roots of anorexia nervosa, Sobo's study of the social meanings of obesity in Jamaica, and Harris' "The Abominable Pig". Other writers explore such issues as breast-feeding, "industrial food", and hunger.
Very interesting and worthwhile for those interested in the deeper meanings of food and eating.

(The numerical rating above is an ineradicable feature of this page. This reviewer does nor employ numerical ratings.)

Editorial Review:

Food and Culture: A Reader, is a solidly established classroom and reference text for scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences. It has been assigned in courses in anthropology, cultural studies, folklore, food studies, history, literature, philosophy, sociology, archeology, American studies, and more. Food and Culture remains significant because it demonstrates the centrality of cultural anthropology to the study of food. It is unique in providing an interdisciplinary collection of classic and cutting-edge articles in the field of food and culture studies that combine theory with ethnographic and historical data.

The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home

George Howe Colt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 55 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

From the Gilded Age to the Golden Arches 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The Big House and The Hidden House are two summer homes on the Atkinson/Colt ancestral property at Buzzard's Bay on Cape Cod. Similarly, author George Colt Howe offers us two stories within one book: First, a magnificent tale of life at that big family summer retreat on Cape Cod and its evolvement over the last century. Second, a stupefying slog through five generations of Boston Brahmin lore. In a nutshell, great granddad was the nineteenth century patriarch who bankrolled the good life for four generations. Hitting tennis balls and winning sailing pennants preoccupied the lives of his progeny, no one else worked too hard. Fortunately, every other generation, an industrious grandson-in-law shows up to keep the home in the family.

The story of the house, and the author's emotional attachment to it, is colorful and endearing. Howe writes with painstaking love for special nooks and crannies of the Big House, of magical childhood memories, and the traditions he wishes he could afford to pass on to his own children. Readers with a longtime family residence, summer home or other special place held dear in their hearts will connect with this author. His descriptions of 'old Cape Cod' chronicle a bygone pre-fastfood era when the Cape was truly an isolated getaway.

You can't blame Howe for the dullness of reading about rich dead white guys who were his forebears. His editors failed him. Skim the genealogy, don't worry about who was who's granduncle or aunt. We could have had more specifics about the patriarch Ned Atkinson, and far less about his descendants. It's always the relatives who spoil a summer vacation.

Editorial Review:

Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt returned for one last stay with his wife and children. This poignant tribute to the eleven-bedroom jumble of gables, bays, and dormers that watched over weddings, divorces, deaths, anniversaries, birthdays, breakdowns, and love affairs for five generations interweaves Colt's final visit with memories of a lifetime of summers. Run-down yet romantic, the Big House stands not only as a cherished reminder of summer's ephemeral pleasures but also as a powerful symbol of a vanishing way of life.

Joie de Vivre: Simple French Style for Everyday Living

Robert Arbor, Katherine Whiteside

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Joie de Vivre, Robert Arbor, a Frenchman transplanted to New York City, explains the French philosophy on life and argues for its adoption by stressed Americans. In a funny way, this is sort of a self-help book for people who admire the French lifestyle, and for those who believe that good food is the secret to a happy life. The premise of the book is that you will find "domestic happiness" when you learn to enjoy the most mundane details of your everyday life: "It's about making time for family, growing some vegetables in your garden, chatting with the butcher, and cooking for your family and friends." Quality of life, explains Arbor, is only improved when your pillowcases smell like lavender, and you make your own hot chocolate.

Although there are 50 recipes dispersed throughout the book, Joie de Vivre is not a cookbook. Most of the recipes are for dishes like A Really Good Fried Egg, mayonnaise, and café au lait, but there are interesting as well, such as Carrot Râpée, Beet Vinaigrette, and Fish in Papillotte. The recipes are included more as a way to better describe the French experience and to show how easy it is to adopt as a way of life; a method which works particularly well for those of us who know that the best way to understand and appreciate a foreign culture is through its food. --Leora Y. Bloom

Not Without My Daughter

Betty Mahmoody, William Hoffer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 248 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Edge-of-your-seat... 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

When I was in high school, a friend of mine recommended "Not Without My Daughter." Twenty years later, I finally got around to reading it. I wish that friend were still in my life to discuss the book with. I recall her saying she stayed up all night, unable to put the book down, and I had much the same reaction. It is a riveting tale of domestic abuse and a harrowing escape, occuring in Tehran in 1984. Yes, there were moments that made me squirm because Betty Mahmoody seemed like a spoiled American making sweeping generalizations about a culture she had little time to experience, but the story overall is a compelling one.

I recommend the book highly, with reservations. I also read "Persepolis" recently and that provided a much needed counterpoint to Mahmoody's biases. It is essential to consider more than one person's experiences. Not everyone in Iran is like the family she married into. That said, this is a compelling story and one worth knowing about.

Editorial Review:

In August 1984, Michigan housewife Betty Mahmoody accompanied her husband to his native Iran for a two-week vacation. To her horror, she found herself and her four-year-old daughter, Mahtob, virtual prisoners of a man rededicated to his Shiite Moslem faith, in a land where women are near-slaves and Americans are despised. Their only hope for escape lay in a dangerous underground that would not take her child...

Now the true story of this courageous woman and her breathtaking odyssey bursts upon the screen in the Pathe Entertainment production starring Academy Award-winner Sally Field!

A Literary Guild Alternate Selection.

Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish

Tom Shachtman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Revealing Look at Amish Life 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

"Rumspringa" is mainly about the Amish coming of age ritual in which the Amish youth are allowed to run around with the "English", but it is also a fascinating look at Amish life in general. The Amish life is a rigid one, especially for the women, and it is not surprising that some of the youth don't return after their Rumspringa. The price they pay if they don't return is a steep one - not only other Amish, but also their own family shun them, but it is a price some have to pay to be true to themselves.

"Rumspringa" is a well-written and well-researched look at Amish life. Author Tom Shachtman interviewed a lot of Amish in the course of writing the book and their conversations are enlightening. While the book is mostly about Rumspringa, all aspects of Amish life are covered and some are eye opening. Much is made of how the Amish youth act during Rumspringa (excess drugs, alcohol, and sex) and while some behavior is self-destructive, many young Amish choose to not return to Amish life because their choices are limited. Ironically, while the Amish school system provides a better education than public schools, that education is limited (for example, science is not taught and most are not educated past eighth grade). Because of that, their life choices are limited - girls are expected to stay at home, get married and raise a family, while the boys are expected to work the farm. It is no wonder some choose to leave, although the price they pay is a high one.

For the most part, Shachtman does a good job of not being too judgmental. He strays a bit, especially when trying to make the teens actions during Rumspringa shocking. But for the most part his writing is straightforward and lets the story tell itself without making it too sensational. His look into the Amish life is very revealing, at times interesting and heartwarming and other times a bit shocking (there are allegations of child abuse). All of this is very informative.

In the end, I learned a lot about the Amish way of life by reading "Rumspringa".

Editorial Review:

Rumspringa is Tom Shachtman’s celebrated look at a littleknown Amish coming-of-age ritual, the rumspringa—the period of “running around” that begins for their youth at age sixteen. During this time, Amish youth are allowed to live outside the bounds of their faith, experimenting with alcohol, premarital sex, revealing clothes, telephones, drugs, and wild parties. By allowing such broad freedoms, their parents hope they will learn enough to help them make the most important decision of their lives—whether to be baptized as Christians, join the church, and forever give up worldly ways, or to remain in the world.

In this searching book, Shachtman draws on his skills as a documentarian to capture young people on the cusp of a fateful decision, and to give us “one of the most absorbing books ever written about the Plain People” (Publishers Weekly).

Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York

Kathy Peiss

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Women's Appropriation of Leisure 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Peiss begins her argument by explaining the relationship of industrial capitalism to wage labor in creating class-conscious leisure arenas, literally recalling Roy Rosenzweig's study. Peiss's distinction lies in "this conception of leisure did not develop historically in the same way for both sexes." (Peiss, 4). Sexual division ultimately shaped and confined women's leisure to their homes. Thus, the typical wage-earning females in pursuit of leisure were young and single. Their youth and marriage status turned their attentions from the leisurely pursuits of Rosenzweig's working men but to dance halls, amusement parks, and movie theatres.
The emerging youth-oriented forms of recreation could not be ignored by the commercial industry, which viewed female participation as lucrative. In addition, these commercialized forms of amusement fostered a heterosocial culture that eventually brought new meanings and restriction to same-sex gender friendships. Rather than stand by and chronicle these changes in leisure for working-class women, Peiss makes the bold argument that these women were actual agents in shaping the nature of their leisure, and Peiss proves again and again to be correct. Even more impressive is her claim that the majority of these women were immigrants or second-generation immigrants (Peiss, 56-88). In examining the actual amusements of working-class women--dance halls, excursions, amusement parks, and the movies, Peiss illustrates vividly how women had a place in the architecture of their own leisure.
It is Peiss's conclusion that women's suffrage and the growth of women in the public sphere "infectiously appealed to other middle-class women who were less politicized. Dancing sensual dances, attending cabarets and nightclubs, living as "bachelor girls" in apartment houses, these women expressed a new-found sense of freedom and possibility." (Peiss, 185). Interestingly, the phenomena of entertainment for working-class women eventually made its way to the middle-class, though the "cheap" amusements deliberately shed their vulgarity for the more formal tastes of the middle-class. Although the adventures of the single working-class woman often ceased with marriage, their new leisure pursuits would only grow with consumerism.

Editorial Review:

Peiss has made a major contribution to feminist scholarship . . . in helping to restore working-class women to history.-International Journal of the History of Sport

French or Foe?: Getting the Most Out of Visiting, Living and Working in France

Polly Platt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 72 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Polly or folly? 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Polly Platt's book is a mixture of valuable insight and eye-rolling pompousness. To give her due credit, the first chapter is full of useful information and essentially contains all that you will need to know from this book. Soon thereafter the book descends into a name-dropping snobbery and gives all the tips you'd need to know if you were visiting with the upper 3% of French society. Much of what Ms. Platt reveals about French culture seems to be outdated and of little relevance to the middle and lower-class French people that a visitor will no doubt actually be coming into contact with. Indeed, the author leaves the reader feeling that they would not be allowed at Ms. Platt's own dinner table.

When I visited Paris I certainly found some of her information useful, such as her recommendation to use "The Ten Magic Words" (again, in the first chapter), and whether many of the French we came across were smiling and accommodating for this reason, I cannot say. Read this book and you will likely make fewer cultural mistakes in France than you would have if you hadn't, but read it knowing it is not the last word on French culture, and does not apply to most of the French population.

Editorial Review:

Let's face it: the French have gotten a bad rap. Mention that you're considering a trip to France and everyone will warn you about rude waiters, supercilious shopkeepers, and snooty concierges who won't give you the time of day--and worse, pretend not to understand your high-school French. Not so, says Polly Platt, author of French or Foe?; "The French are generous, exhilarating friends," but they are different--wonderfully so. The trick to getting along in France is understanding the culture and learning to accept it on French terms instead of your own. Though the book is designed primarily for people who will be living or working in France for extended periods, the lessons Platt teaches about manners, attitudes, and culture are invaluable for even those visitors just passing through.

Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

Kathleen Norris

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Total reviews: 46 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

After 20 years of living in the "Great American Outback," as Newsweek magazine once designated the Dakotas, poet Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk) came to understand the fascinating ways that people become metaphors for the land they inhabit. When trying to understand the polarizing contradictions that exist in the Dakotas between "hospitality and insularity, change and inertia, stability and instability.... between hope and despair, between open hearts and closed minds," Norris draws a map. "We are at the point of transition between east and west in the United States," she explains, "geographically and psychically isolated from either coast, and unlike either the Midwest or the desert west."

Like Terry Tempest Williams (Refuge), Norris understands how the boundary between inner and outer scenery begins to blur when one is fully present in the landscape of their lives. As a result, she offers the geography lesson we all longed for in school. This is a poetic, noble, and often funny (see her discussion on the foreign concept of tofu) tribute to Dakota, including its Native Americans, Benedictine monks, ministers and churchgoers, wind-weathered farmers, and all its plain folks who live such complicated and simple lives. --Gail Hudson

Patterns of Culture

Ruth Benedict

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Unique and important . . . Patterns of Culture is a signpost on the road to a freer and more tolerant life." -- New York Times

A remarkable introduction to cultural studies, Patterns of Culture is an eloquent declaration of the role of culture in shaping human life. In this fascinating work, the renowned anthropologist Ruth Benedict compares three societies -- the Zuni of the southwestern United States, the Kwakiutl of western Canada, and the Dobuans of Melanesia -- and demonstrates the diversity of behaviors in them. Benedict's groundbreaking study shows that a unique configuration of traits defines each human culture and she examines the relationship between culture and the individual. Featuring prefatory remarks by Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Louise Lamphere, this provocative work ultimately explores what it means to be human.


"That today the modern world is on such easy terms with the concept of culture . . . is in very great part due to this book." -- Margaret Mead

"Benedict's Patterns of Culture is a foundational text in teaching us the value of diversity. Her hope for the future still has resonance in the twenty-first century: that recognition of cultural relativity will create an appreciation for 'the coexisting and equally valid patterns of life which mankind has created for itself from the raw materials of existence.'" -- from the new foreword by Louise Lamphere, past president of the American Anthrolopological Association


Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) was one of the most eminent anthropologists of the twentieth century. Her profoundly influential books Patterns of Culture and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture were bestsellers when they were first published, and they have remained indispensable works for the study of culture in the many decades since.

Brit-Think, Ameri-Think: A Transatlantic Survival Guide, Revised Edition

Jane Walmsley

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Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

At the risk of going on a tirade, it deplicted all Americans to be gum-chewing, pink-cowboy-hat-wearing, loud, uneducated, boorish idiots. Conversely, it depicted the English/ British as pompous, bowler-hat-wearing, demure, easily-offended, hyper-mannered, stifled bores. I am American and my husband is English; we are nothing if not the polar opposite of these depictions. I was constantly offended my the author's wide-cast net of stereotypes. I agree there are many in ANY country of these type-casts, but to write a book attempting to acclimatize people to a new country/ lifestyle/ attitude... honey, do some more research that isn't heavily embedded in watching old reruns of "Keeping Up Appearances" and/ or "Dukes of Hazard".

Editorial Review:

hen it comes to understanding the great cultural ocean that divides Brits and Yanks, it's not just our vocabulary but also our attitudes that differ. This irreverent guide surveys a whole gamut of British-American divergences, from sex to food, from pets to religion, from sports to money, and from war to-most divergent of all-humor. Entertaining and invaluable, Brit-Think, Ameri-Think has been updated to reflect changes in political, cultural, and social trends, and includes new chapters on cultural icons Oprah Winfrey and Bridget Jones, and on Brit-cool vs. Ameri-cool.