Chef Pyet DeSpain joins the New Books Network to discuss her new cookbook, Rooted in Fire: A Celebration of Native American and Mexican Cooking (HarperOne, 2025). Drawing from her Potawatomi and Mexican heritage, DeSpain shares recipes that connect past and present, including bison meatballs with Wojape BBQ sauce, raspberry mezcal quail, and poblano-corn tamales. Each dish reflects her effort to preserve tradition while creating something new.

In this conversation, Pyet talks about growing up between two cultures and how understanding their shared roots changed her approach to food and identity. She reflects on rediscovering ancestral ingredients, the meaning of her tribe’s “keeper of the fire” role, and the importance of gratitude and ceremony in her cooking.

She also speaks about the family members, chefs, friends and home cooks who inspire her to keep Native American and Mexican foodways alive, ensuring that these traditions continue to be seen, shared, and celebrated.

Interview by Laura Goldberg, longtime food blogger at here.

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Beloved baker and five-time James Beard Award winner Dorie Greenspan joins the New Books Network to discuss her new cookbook, Dorie’s Anytime Cakes (Harvest, 2025), a warm, inviting collection designed to slip easily into everyday life. From celebration-worthy showstoppers to simple loaves meant for sharing over coffee, Greenspan’s latest book distills decades of experience into recipes.

In this conversation, Dorie talks with host Laura Goldberg about how her life between New York, Connecticut, and Paris has shaped her sensibility as both a home baker and a recipe writer. She reflects on the cultural differences she has observed in American and French kitchens, their attitudes toward time, technique, and pleasure, and how these contrasts surface in cakes like her Franco-American Banana Bread, a recipe that bridges two culinary worlds.

Dorie shares the cookbooks and culinary mentors who have most influenced her craft, as well as the joy of collaborating with a design team whose work helps the book feel lively, inviting, and full of personality.

The episode also explores the book’s recipe inspirations, including holiday-ready desserts like the Thanksgiving Cake with its sweet potatoes, maple, and marshmallow frosting, and the Cocoa-Swirled Pumpkin Bundt, which links late autumn to winter festivities. She also explains her chapter on Salty Cakes, a playful reimagining of what a cake can be. Recipes such as the Harissa-Lemon Loaf and the Seaweed and Furikake Muffins show how savory ingredients can transform familiar forms into something surprising, satisfying, and perfect for lunch, snacks, or aperitif hour.

Interview by Laura Goldberg, longtime food blogger here.

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How did China’s Nationalists feed their armies during the long war against Japan? In her new book, Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China’s Total War, 1937-1945 (Cambridge UP, 2025), Jennifer Yip (National University of Singapore) looks at China’s military grain systems from field to frontline. Yip examines the bureaucratic processes and deeply human stories of requisitioning, transporting, and storing grain in Nationalist-held China. This forensic look at food helps readers rethink the geographies, timings and burdens of China’s war of resistance – as well as the meanings of total war itself. By uncoupling ‘total war’ from images of industrialised warfare, Grains of Conflict shows how China’s war with Japan mobilized the labor and resources of Chinese society on a total scale.

In this interview, Yip explores the achievements and difficulties of Nationalist grain mobilization and discusses how the long conflict in China became a multi-sided ‘struggle for food’ – with devastating results.

Grains of Conflict is highly recommended for anyone interested in modern Chinese history and the history of war in the twentieth century.

Host: Mark Baker is lecturer (assistant professor) in East Asian history at the University of Manchester, UK.

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Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring: Adventures with the King of Fishes (Hurst, 2025) by Graeme Rigby contains almost everything you didn’t know you needed to know about Atlantic herrings. (Pacific and Baltic varieties are in there too.) Herrings make the world bigger: with spawnings seen from space, a trillion individuals make this one of the tastiest and most abundant vertebrates on Earth.

From ‘A Beginning’ to ‘Zuiderzee’, count the wars fought over herrings; don’t forget Scotland vs the Holy Roman Empire. The herring’s high-pitched farts were logged as Soviet submarines, and one herring joke featured in a Jonson play, four Shakespeare plays and the glorious, suppressed fantasia Nashes Lenten Stuffe. Herrings mock taxonomists; physically change with sea temperature and salinity; stuff predators full to bursting, then swim away.

The Great Sardine Litigation? The true history of kippers? Bloaters? Reds? Chopped herring? Shuba? All this and more. Between sustainable fishery genetics, sixteenth-century Bavaria’s ‘Herrings, herrings, stinking herrings’, and Van Gogh’s ear, every entry is a story, a comic journey, an adventure. Some even come with recipes.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Beloved baker and author Gesine Bullock-Prado returns to the New Books Network to chat about her delicious new cookbook, My Harvest Kitchen, the highly anticipated follow-up to her best-selling My Vermont Table. This time, she invites us back into her kitchen to celebrate the beauty of cooking with the seasons.

From the tender crunch of just-picked lettuce to the simple perfection of Aunt Sis’s Tomato Sandwich, Bullock-Prado’s recipes remind us that good food starts with what’s fresh and local, whether it comes from your own garden, a farmers’ market, or the neighborhood grocery store. There’s even a revelatory recipe for perfect fries (spoiler: they’re brined and twice-fried).

In this lively conversation, Gesine shares her thoughts on growing food, understanding soil, and cultivating a real connection to the ingredients we use. She’s candid about her dream of full-on homesteading and the reality checks along the way, offering an encouraging, down-to-earth perspective for anyone who loves the idea of living closer to the land.

Her stories, like her recipes, are full of humor, heart, and honesty, and they’ll leave you inspired to savor whatever’s in season, wherever you are.

Interview by Laura Goldberg, longtime food blogger at Vittlesvamp.com.

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My Dinner with Andre (1981) is a film that uses the simple premise of two men sharing a meal as a vehicle for exploration of how we should live our lives. It asks fundamental questions about happiness and self-fulfillment that it doesn't wholly answer. The Trip (2010) uses the same premise as a way to dramatize two men earnestly debating who does the better impressions of Michael Caine, Al Pacino, and Sean Connery. But for all its playground sensibility, The Trip is not without ideas regarding how friendships are formed and sustained. Join us for a conversation about the real reason why men befriend each other and what they want from each other. Hint: it’s not sympathy, high regard, or a non-judgmental ear.

If watching The Trip makes you want to make a reservation at your favorite spot, you may want to first read Adam Reiner’s The New Rules of Dining Out: An Insider's Guide to Enjoying Restaurants.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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The humble goat has played a surprising and important role throughout the history of the United States. Despite this, goats are often overlooked by many Americans, even if they have strong opinions about these complex creatures. In Goats in America: A Cultural History (Oregon State UP, 2025) Dr. Tami Parr calls attention to these disregarded animals, uncovering the remarkable stories behind everything from goat meat and milk to goat yoga and more.

Since arriving in North America with cattle and other domesticated livestock in the sixteenth century, goats have provided people sustenance and valuable products, including milk, meat, and mohair. But humans did not appreciate the animals, and as a result, throughout much of American history goats were persecuted as public nuisances and symbols of degenerate behavior. Nevertheless, over the centuries the tenacious goat has overcome many of these stereotypes and secured a spot in the hearts and minds of modern Americans, who love goat cheese and embrace goats as social media stars.

Examining key moments and notable developments in goat history and culture, Goats in America outlines the history and evolving role of goats in communities across the country, from San Francisco and New York City to rural Wisconsin and the Navajo Nation. Parr shows that the evolving reputation of goats in American society ultimately reveals more about humans than it does about goats themselves. So, the next time you are enjoying your favorite goat cheese, take a moment to consider the history and role of goats within American culture.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Food consumers are demanding a healthier and more sustainable food system. Yet labor is rarely part of the discussion. In Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain (U California Press, 2025), Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa Mares chronicle labor across the food chain, connecting the entire food system--from fields to stores, restaurants, home kitchens, and even garbage dumps. Using a political economy framework, the authors argue that improving labor standards and building solidarity among frontline workers across sectors is necessary for creating a more just food system. What would it take, they ask, to move toward a food system that is devoid of human exploitation? Combining insights from food systems and labor justice scholarship with actionable recommendations for policy makers, the book is a call to action for labor activists, food studies students and scholars, and anyone interested in food justice.

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The views expressed by the guest are their own and do not reflect those of the New Books Network or its hosts. This episode contains some content that listeners may find controversial.

A home cook's guide to one of America's most diverse - and delicious - cuisines, from James Beard Award-winning author and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty 'Our cuisine, with its grits and black-eyed peas, crab cakes, red rice, and endless variations on the staple foods of the region, casts a spell that, if you're lucky, gets passed down with snapping string beans at the table and chewing cane on the back porch.' - Michael W. Twitty In the introduction to this groundbreaking recipe collection, acclaimed historian Michael W. Twitty declares, 'No one state or area can give you the breadth of the Southern story or fully set the Southern table.' To answer this, Recipes from the American South journeys from the Louisiana Bayou to the Chesapeake Bay, showcasing more than 260 of the region's most beloved dishes. Across more than 400 pages, Twitty explores the broad culinary sweep that Southern history and its many cultures represent. Recipes for breads and biscuits, mains and sides, stews, sauces, and sweets feature insightful headnotes and clear, step-by-step instructions. Home cooks will discover both iconic dishes and lesser-known specialties: Chicken and Dumplings, She-crab Soup, Red Eye Gravy, Benne Seed Wafers, Hummingbird Cake, and Mint Juleps appear alongside Shrimp Pilau, Chorizo Dirty Rice, Sumac Lemonade, and Cajun Pig's Ears Pastry. A masterful storyteller, Twitty enriches his extensive recipe collection with lyrical, deeply researched essays that celebrate the region's "multicultural gumbo" of influences from immigrants from across the globe. Vibrant food photography adds further color to the fascinating narrative. Expansive, authoritative, and beautifully designed, Recipes from the American South is a classic cookbook in the making.

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The first and definitive history of the use of food in American law and politics as a weapon of conquest and control, a Fast Food Nation for the Black Lives Matter era In 1779, to subjugate Indigenous nations, George Washington ordered his troops to “ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.” Destroying harvests is just one way that the United States has used food as a political tool. Trying to prevent enslaved people from rising up, enslavers restricted their consumption, providing only enough to fuel labor. Since the Great Depression, school lunches have served as dumping grounds for unwanted agricultural surpluses. From frybread to government cheese, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: America’s Politics of Food, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch (Metropolitan Books, 2024) on the Ground draws on over fifteen years of research to argue that American food law and policy have created and maintained racial and social inequality. In an epic, sweeping account, Andrea Freeman, who pioneered the term “food oppression,” moves from colonization to slavery to the Americanization of immigrant food culture, to the commodities supplied to Native reservations, to milk as a symbol of white supremacy. She traces the long-standing alliance between the government and food industries that have produced gaping racial health disparities, and she shows how these practices continue to this day, through the marketing of unhealthy goods that target communities of color, causing diabetes, high blood pressure, and premature death. Ruin Their Crops on the Ground is a groundbreaking addition to the history and politics of food. It will permanently upend the notion that we freely and equally choose what we put on our plates.

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