Cookbooks are not political in conventional ways. They neither proclaim, as do manifestos, nor do they forbid, as do laws. They do not command agreement, as do arguments, and their stipulations often lack specificity — cook "until browned." Yet, as repositories of human taste, cookbooks transmit specific blends of flavor, texture, and nutrition across space and time. Cookbooks both form and reflect who we are. InCookbook Politics, Kennan Ferguson explores the sensual and political implications of these repositories, demonstrating how they create nations, establish ideologies, shape international relations, and structure communities. Cookbook Politicsargues that cookbooks highlight aspects of our lives we rarely recognize as political—taste, production, domesticity, collectivity, and imagination—and considers the ways in which cookbooks have or do politics, from the most overt to the most subtle. Cookbooks turn regional diversity into national unity, as Pellegrino Artusi'sScience in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Welldid for Italy in 1891. Politically affiliated organizations compile and sell cookbooks—for example, the early United Nations publishedThe World's Favorite Recipes. From the First Baptist Church of Midland, Tennessee's community cookbook, to Julia Child'sMastering the Art of French Cooking, to the Italian Futurists' proto-fascist guide to food preparation, Ferguson demonstrates how cookbooks mark desires and reveal social commitments: your table becomes a representation of who you are. Authoritative, yet flexible; collective, yet individualized; cooperative, yet personal—cookbooks invite participation, editing, and transformation. Created to convey flavor and taste across generations, communities, and nations, they enact the continuities and changes of social lives. Their functioning in the name of creativity and preparation—with readers happily consuming them in similar ways—makes cookbooks an exemplary model for democratic politics. | Cookbook Politics by Kennan Ferguson, Paper over Board | Indigo Chapters