Pigs and history

High on the Hog  This link to a posting on  "Cooking With Ideas" blog about a book by that title.  Here's a snippet. The post has links to longer reviews as well. 

"High on the Hog, [to book] by Jessica B. Harris, is subtitled A Culinary Journey from Africa to America and is a swell, detailed, overview of much of that history. It includes pain -- of course, given the history of slavery, Jim Crow and ongoing discrimination -- and lots of history I did not know. Not surprisingly much of this revolves around the ways food and culinary prowess have been historically important across the centuries. Thus, for example, slaves selling and bartering food as a way to survive and, on occasion, accrue enough to purchase their freedom, continuities of foodstuffs (including the Columbian exchange wherein plants made it from the Western hemisphere to Africa and then came back with slaves as part of their diet), the role of free (and enslaved) African Americans in food service in urban areas (I was particularly intrigued by a historical figure named Robert Bogle in Philadelphia and by the place of oysters in New York City), and the role of trains in the history of American culinary development."

Seems like a book I'd like and one that takes a very "AmCon" sort of approach to its topic.  The study of "food ways" seems to be booming along side concerns about eating well (healthy and ethical and tasty).  No doubt this is because food tells us so very much about who we are and what we value, both as individuals and was groups.