COOKING · HISTORY
Roberts, Michael
Also known as: ROBERTS Michael, Roberts, Michael, 1908-1996.
Historical anthropologist, University of Adelaide
Most acclaimed
Gustavus Adolphus
Gustavus Adolphus (1594-l632, king of Sweden 1611-1632) was one of the dominant figures of the early seventeenth century. He made Sweden the leading power of Northern Europe; was the champion of the northern Protestant cause in the Thirty Years War; and was a great administrator as well as a brilliant soldier, whose reforms helped define the development of the modern state. His dazzling career, brought to a premature end on the battlefield of Lutzen when he was still well short of forty, is an obvious subject for treatment in the Profiles in Power series. Michael Roberts's magisterial two-volume study of Gustavus Adolphus was published by Longman in the 1950s. It is still the standard biography; but from the very outset its monumental scale put it beyond all but the most serious student of the age. In 1973, to meet the need for a concise account of the subject designed for students and general readers, Professor Roberts published Gustavus Adolphus and the Rise of Sweden.^ It has itself been unavailable for some years, and the need for a short authoritative book in English on Gustavus Adolphus is again pressing. That earlier book now forms the basis of the present volume, and is issued under the Longman imprint for the first time. Professor Roberts has revised and expanded the text to take account of work that has appeared on the period since 1973, and to fit it to its new series context. The bibliography has been updated, enlarged and modified. Intended for those who don't read Swedish, it indicates the increasing number of Swedish-language works that are published with an English summary. The entire work has been redesigned and reset. Its essential purpose, however, remains as before: to make accessible to a non-specialist readership the large and complex fields of action in which Gustavus and his chancellor Oxenstierna played so conspicuous a part; and to bring them alive as human beings. In both these aims it triumphantly succeeds.^ Its appearance, reuniting Professor Roberts and Gustavus Adolphus (and, incidentally, Longman) for the first time in a generation, will be widely welcomed.
Secret ingredients
Dining out: All you can hold for five bucks / Joseph Mitchell -- The finest butter and lots of time / Joseph Wechsberg -- A good appetite / A.J. Liebling -- The afterglow / A.J. Liebling -- Is there a crisis in French cooking? / Adam Gopnik -- Don't eat before reading this / Anthony Bourdain -- A really big lunch / Jim Harrison -- Eating in: The secret ingredient / M.F.K. Fisher -- The trouble with tripe / M.F.K. Fisher -- Nor censure nor disdain / M.F.K. Fisher -- Good cooking: / Calvin Tomkins -- Look back in hunger / Anthony Lane -- The reporter's kitchen / Jane Kramer -- Fishing and foraging: A mess of clams / Joseph Mitchell -- A forager / John McPhee -- The fruit detective / John Seabrook -- Gone fishing / Mark Singer -- On the bay / Bill Buford -- Local delicacies: An attempt to compile a short history of The buffalo chicken wing / Calvin Trillin -- The homesick restaurant / Susan Orlean -- The magic bagel / Calvin Trillin -- A rat in my soup / Peter Hessler -- Raw faith / Burkhard Bilger -- Night kitchens / Judith Thurman -- The pour: Dry martini / Roger Angell -- The red and the white / Calvin Trillin -- The russian god / Victor Erofeyev -- The ketchup conundrum / Malcolm Gladwell -- Tastes funny: But the one on the right / Dorothy Parker -- Curl up and diet / Ogden Nash -- Quick, hammacher, my stomacher! / Ogden Nash -- Nesselrode to jeopardy / S.J. Perelman -- Eat, drink, and be merry / Peter De Vries -- Notes from the overfed / Woody Allen -- Two menus / Steve Martin -- The zagat history of my last relationship 409(3) / Noah Baumbach -- Your table is ready / John Kenney -- Small plates: Bock / William Shawn -- Diat / Geoffrey T. Hellman -- 4 a.m. / James Stevenson -- Slave / Alex Prud'Homme -- Under the hood / Mark Singer -- Protein source / Mark Singer -- A sandwich / Nora Ephron -- Sea urchin / Chang-Rae Lee -- As the french do / Janet MalColm -- Blocking and chowing / Ben McGrath -- When edibles attack / Rebecca Mead -- Killing dinner / Gabrielle Hamilton -- Fiction: [Taste]( / Roald Dahl -- Two roast beefs / V.S. Pritchett -- The sorrows of gin / John Cheever -- The jaguar sun / Italo Calvino -- There should be a name for it / Matthew Klam -- Sputnik / Don DeLillo -- Enough / Alice McDermott -- The butcher's wife / Louise Erdrich -- Bark / Julian Barnes.