How Would You Like Your Mammoth?

“Food is pleasure, of course, but it is also memory, escapism, and nostalgia” “The rule of hospitality establishes community - but it is the food that creates communality”

How Would You Like Your Mammoth? is a collection of short non-fiction snippets about food and its interactions with humans and society.

This book covers a very long time period and so it definitely felt overall like it had a slow pace. The bite-sized pieces however, means that if you’re going to read this, I highly recommend taking your time. Each specific food history is probably 3 or 4 pages and relatively digestible but trying to read any more than two or three food histories became difficult.

Overall, I felt like I learned a decent amount of new information about the history of food. Truthfully, I’m not sure how much will stick with me as a lot of it was older foods that wouldn’t necessarily still be eaten today, but this was a fascinating read nonetheless. A lot of facts and brief origin stories (when able) made this enjoyable.

The author’s personal opinions do seem to make its way into the book near the end, as we get into more modern history. Not that I necessarily disagree with any of their opinions but they do become much more prevalent near the end which may put some readers off. However, as mentioned throughout - food is politicized - and the opinions are ultimately to be expected!

What a fun book! Each few pages is a cool story about some type of food and where it came from. This is easy to pick up when waiting in a line or in the doctor's office. I learned so much!

This is a collection of short, non-fiction vignettes about food and how it has interacted with humans throughout time. I definitely learned a lot from this read!