I happened to see the book on the new book shelf of a nearby public library (in Saguache, Colorado, gift of the garden club), and I’ve had fun skimming through most of it and dipping in here and there. Kurlansky–himself a very good writer–compiled, edited, revised, and wrote an introduction. So did a lot of people whose writing abilities were minimal. It had been part of a huge government project to provide work for writers, and Eudora Welty, Nelson Algren, and some other famous names of the era worked on it. To be called America Eats, it was a compilation of food writing from different regions, but when World War II came along, it was abandoned. Author Mark Kurlansky found the drafts of a Depression project that had never been published.
There were major regional variations in those days. With a subtitle of A portrait of American food- before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, you get the idea. The Food of a Younger Land is a partly-fascinating tour around the US during the depression.
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