Elegantly written by a distinguished culinary historian, Food Is Culture explores the innovative premise that everything having to do with food--its capture, cultivation, preparation, and consumption--represents a cultural act. Even the "choices" made by primitive hunters and gatherers were determined by a culture of economics (availability) and medicine (digestibility and nutrition) that led to the development of specific social structures and traditions. Massimo Montanari begins with the "invention" of cooking which allowed humans to transform natural, edible objects into cuisine. Cooking led to the creation of the kitchen, the adaptation of raw materials into utensils, and the birth of written and oral guidelines to formalize cooking techniques like roasting, broiling, and frying. The transmission of recipes allowed food to acquire its own language and grow into a complex cultural product shaped by climate, geography, the pursuit of pleasure, and later, the desire for health. In his history, Montanari touches on the spice trade, the first agrarian societies, Renaissance dishes that synthesized different tastes, and the analytical attitude of the Enlightenment, which insisted on the separation of flavors. Brilliantly researched and analyzed, he shows how food, once a practical necessity, evolved into an indicator of social standing and religious and political identity. Whether he is musing on the origins of the fork, the symbolic power of meat, cultural attitudes toward hot and cold foods, the connection between cuisine and class, the symbolic significance of certain foods, or the economical consequences of religious holidays, Montanari's concise yet intellectually rich reflections add another dimension to the history of human civilization. Entertaining and surprising, Food Is Culture is a fascinating look at how food is the ultimate embodiment of our continuing attempts to tame, transform, and reinterpret nature.
Massimo Montanari is professor of medieval history and history of food at the University of Bologna. He has achieved wide recognition for his many searching and thoroughly researched studies of culinary traditions. Since 1979 he has authored and coauthored more than a dozen books, including Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History (Columbia), Food: A Culinary History (Columbia), Famine and Plenty: The History of Food in Europe, and the recent Bologna la Grassa. Albert Sonnenfeld, longtime professor of Romance languages and literature at Princeton and Chevalier Professor of French/Italian at the University of Southern California, is series editor for Columbia University Press's Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History, which has published his translations of Giovanni Rebora's Culture of the Fork and Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari's Food: A Culinary History.
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这本书最让我感到惊喜的,是它在论述过程中所展现出的那种罕见的“同理心”。作者的笔触虽然客观,但字里行间流淌着对人类困境的深切理解。他没有居高临下地评判任何一种生活方式的“优劣”,而是试图去理解每一种选择背后的生存逻辑和情感寄托。书中有一段关于哀悼习俗的描述,仅仅是几页文字,却将不同文化中面对死亡的无力和挣扎刻画得淋漓尽致,让我这个平时不太容易流露情感的人,也忍不住为之动容。这种文学性的感染力,与它严谨的学术框架完美地结合在了一起,形成了强大的张力。它没有宏大叙事中的空洞口号,只有对个体生命经验的尊重与呈现。它是一本需要慢读的书,每一次慢下来,都会发现新的层次和更深的情感共鸣。读完它,我感觉自己的心胸开阔了许多,对复杂人性的理解也多了一份宽容和耐心。这不仅仅是一部学术著作,更像是一部写给所有对人类经验抱有好奇心的人的情书。
评分这本厚重的书册,初捧上手便觉其分量不凡,书脊上的烫金字体在灯光下泛着低调的光泽,预示着内容的深度。我花了整整一个周末才勉强啃完第一部分,那种感觉就像是走进了迷宫,每翻开一页,都仿佛被卷入了一个全新的、充满异域风情的漩涡。作者的叙事手法极为精妙,他似乎并不急于抛出结论,而是像一个经验丰富的向导,带着读者穿梭于历史的尘埃与现代的喧嚣之间。比如,他对某一古代文明祭祀仪式的细致描摹,那种氛围的营造简直是身临其境,我能清晰地感受到空气中弥漫的香料气息和低沉的吟唱声。更令人称奇的是,书中对不同文化间知识传播路径的梳理,逻辑链条环环相扣,却又铺陈得极其自然,完全没有教科书式的枯燥。他引用的那些一手资料,从残破的羊皮纸拓片到近现代的田野调查记录,都显示出作者扎实的学术功底和近乎偏执的求证精神。读到后来,我发现自己不再是单纯地阅读文字,而是在脑海中构建着一个庞大而精密的文化地图,每一次阅读都是一次重塑世界观的旅程。这本书的阅读体验是沉浸式的,它要求读者投入极大的注意力和思考,但回报也是丰厚的,它提供的视角之新颖、洞察之深刻,足以让人在合上书本后,长时间地凝视窗外,陷入沉思。
评分我不得不说,这本书的行文风格,初读时确实让人有些措手不及,它不像那些畅销书那样直白热络,反而带着一种古典的疏离感。作者仿佛站在高处,用一种近乎哲学的冷静笔触解剖着世间万物,但这种冷静中又偶尔闪烁着对人类创造力的无比赞叹。我尤其欣赏其中对于“符号”与“意义”之间关系的探讨,那几章涉及符号学的分析,简直是精彩绝伦的智力游戏。他巧妙地将看似毫不相关的文化现象联系起来,比如将某种特定的编织图案与古老的航海图谱进行比对,揭示出深藏在日常生活表象之下的共通性思维模式。这种宏观的视野,让人不禁自问:我们习以为常的那些“常识”,究竟有多少是真正具有普遍性的?全书的论证过程,不是简单的线性推理,而是像一张巨大的网,各个知识点相互支撑,形成一个坚不可摧的逻辑结构。坦率地说,某些段落需要反复阅读才能捕捉到其中精髓,这无疑抬高了阅读门槛,但对于那些渴望深度思考的读者而言,这反而是它最大的魅力所在。它不是用来消磨时间的读物,而是用来挑战思维极限的工具。
评分说实话,初拿到这书时,我对它的期待是比较功利的,我希望它能迅速提供一些实用的、可立即应用的理论框架。然而,阅读过程却像是一场漫长的、渐进式的觉醒。它没有提供现成的答案,而是更有效地引导你去提出更深刻的问题。书中对于“人类共性与差异性”的探讨,尤为发人深省。作者没有陷入文化相对主义的泥潭,也没有盲目地推崇普世价值,而是提供了一种极为 nuanced(微妙的、细致的)的观察视角。他描绘了文化基因如何在不同的环境压力下,演化出看似矛盾实则内在统一的解决方案。比如,他对某一特定地理环境下,社会组织结构形成机制的分析,简直是教科书级别的案例研究,将社会学、人类学和生态学的知识熔于一炉,但其语言却保持着令人惊叹的清晰度。读完后,我发现自己看世界的角度发生了一种微妙的偏移——我开始习惯于在任何事物背后,去追溯其演化的历史轨迹和环境的约束力,这种思维惯性的转变,远比任何单一的知识点更有价值。
评分这本书的排版和装帧设计,透露出一种对知识本身的敬畏。纸张的质感极为优良,墨色浓郁,即便是长时间的夜间阅读,眼睛也不会感到明显的疲劳。设计者显然也理解了作者的意图,没有使用过多花哨的插图来分散读者的注意力,而是选择了一些恰到好处的、往往是黑白的老照片或手绘草图作为点缀,这些图像的选择极具指向性,它们不是对文字的简单复述,而是提供了另一种侧面的证据或联想的起点。特别是书末的索引和注释部分,其详尽程度简直令人咋舌,几乎可以作为一本独立的研究参考资料来使用。我留意到,许多次我在思考某个具体细节时,只需要翻到附录部分,就能找到直接的原始出处或相关的学术争论。这种对细节的尊重,体现出出版方和作者对知识严谨性的共同追求。在我看来,一本好书,不仅要内容扎实,外在的呈现方式也应该与之匹配,而这本书在这方面做到了近乎完美。它让阅读变成了一种仪式,一种对知识的庄重对待。
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