The Story of Corn is a unique compendium, drawing upon history and mythology, science and art, anecdote and image, personal narrative and epic to tell the extraordinary story of the grain that built the New World. Corn transformed the way the entire world eats, providing a hardy, inexpensive alternative to rice or wheat and cheap fodder for livestock and finding its way into everything from explosives to embalming fluid.

Betty Fussell has given us a true American saga, interweaving the histories of the indigenous peoples who first cultivated the grain and the European conquerors who appropriated and propagated it around the globe. She explores corn's roles as food, fetish, crop, and commodity to those who have planted, consumed, worshiped, processed, and profited from it for seven centuries.

Now available only from the University of New Mexico Press, The Story of Corn, is the winner of a Julia Child Cookbook Award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

"Written in a lively and nontechnical style."--Library Journal

"Fussell has clearly done a good deal of research and a lot of traveling--peering over a precipice at Machu Picchu, descending into a restored ceremonial kiva of the Anasazi people in New Mexico, visiting the sole surviving corn palace from the Midwest boosters--glory days of a century ago."--Kirkus Reviews

Author: Betty Fussell
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 12/15/2004
Pages: 367
Weight: 1.64lbs
Size: 8.98h x 8.00w x 1.08d
ISBN: 9780826335920


Review Citation(s):
Kliatt 03/01/2005 pg. 43

About the Author
Fussell, Betty: - Betty Fussell received a Ph.D. in English literature, has written over a dozen books about a variety of foods, and penned food columns for The New York Times. She resides in New York.