This unique culinary history of America offers a fascinating look at our past and uses long-forgotten recipes to explain how eight flavors changed how we eat. The United States boasts a culturally and ethnically diverse population which makes for a continually changing culinary landscape. But a young historical gastronomist named Sarah Lohman discovered that American food is united by eight flavors: black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. In Eight Flavors , Lohman sets out to explore how these influential ingredients made their way to the American table. 

this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven "nations" that continue to shape North America According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. 

Just around Midnight explores the interplay of popular music and racial thought in the 1960s by asking how, when, and why rock and roll music "became White." By the time Jimi Hendrix died in 1970 the idea of a Black man playing electric lead guitar was considered literally remarkable in ways it had not been for Chuck Berry only ten years earlier: this book explains how this happened. By excavating an extraordinarily cosmopolitan aesthetic amidst a far-flung community of artists on both sides of the Atlantic, including Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke, the Beatles, Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and others, Just around Midnight offers an interracial counter-history of Sixties music that rejects hermetic ideals of racial authenticity while revealing the pernicious effects of these ideologies on musical understanding.--.