The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread
Author(s): Maria Balinska (Author)
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication Date: September 29, 2009
Language: English
Print length: 240 pages
ISBN-10: 0300158203
ISBN-13: 9780300158205
Book Description
A captivating cultural history of the bagel and its journey through the centuries
If smoked salmon and cream cheese bring only one thing to mind, you can count yourself among the world’s millions of bagel mavens. But few people are aware of the bagel’s provenance, let alone its adventuresome history. This charming book tells the remarkable story of the bagel’s journey from the tables of seventeenth-century Poland to the freezers of middle America today, a story of often surprising connections between a cheap market-day snack and centuries of Polish, Jewish, and American history.
Research in international archives and numerous personal interviews uncover the bagel’s links with the defeat of the Turks by Polish King Jan Sobieski in 1683, the Yiddish cultural revival of the late nineteenth century, and Jewish migration across the Atlantic to America. There the story moves from the bakeries of New York’s Lower East Side to the Bagel Bakers’ Local 388 Union of the 1960s, and the attentions of the mob. For all its modest size, the bagel has managed to bridge cultural gaps, rescue kings from obscurity, charge the emotions, and challenge received wisdom. Maria Balinska weaves together a rich, quirky, and evocative history of East European Jewry and the unassuming ring-shaped roll the world has taken to its heart.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Maria Balinska is editor of BBC Radio’s World Current Affairs department, and a journalist and documentary maker specializing in Eastern Europe and the United States. She lives in London.
The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread
Author(s): Maria Balinska (Author)
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication Date: November 3, 2008
Edition: 1st
Language: English
Print length: 240 pages
ISBN-10: 0300112297
ISBN-13: 9780300112290
Book Description
If smoked salmon and cream cheese bring only one thing to mind, you can count yourself among the world’s millions of bagel mavens. But few people are aware of the bagel’s provenance, let alone its adventuresome history. This charming book tells the remarkable story of the bagel’s journey from the tables of seventeenth-century Poland to the freezers of middle America today, a story of often surprising connections between a cheap market-day snack and centuries of Polish, Jewish, and American history.
Research in international archives and numerous personal interviews uncover the bagel’s links with the defeat of the Turks by Polish King Jan Sobieski in 1683, the Yiddish cultural revival of the late nineteenth century, and Jewish migration across the Atlantic to America. There the story moves from the bakeries of New York’s Lower East Side to the Bagel Bakers’ Local 388 Union of the 1960s, and the attentions of the mob. For all its modest size, the bagel has managed to bridge cultural gaps, rescue kings from obscurity, charge the emotions, and challenge received wisdom. Maria Balinska weaves together a rich, quirky, and evocative history of East European Jewry and the unassuming ring-shaped roll the world has taken to its heart.
The bagel may have grown out of its New York insularity to become an American icon, but its origins are not what many people have come to believe. Historian Balinska traces the bagel’s history and discovers antecedents in southern Italy and in Muslim northwest China. Despite the oft-repeated legend, the bagel did not originate as a tribute to Polish king Jan Sobieski after the Battle of Vienna in 1683, for documents citing the ring-shaped bread substantially antedate that event. In the nineteenth century, both Jewish and Gentile bakers sold bagels in local eastern European markets. Jewish immigrants brought the bagel to New York and made it popular. With a keen ear for telling the anecdote, Balinska reports how the bagel entered urban history, how it figured in labor disputes, and how America’s bagel capital may have shifted to Mattoon, Illinois, whose bakery daily turns out three million bagels. –Mark Knoblauch
Review
“After years of research on Jewish food in America, I thought I had discovered all there was to know about the bagel and its journey. But then I read Maria Balinska’s lively and well-researched book, The Bagel. Her book has filled in many of the questions I had about the bagel and raised new ones, too.”—Joan Nathan, Slate (Joan Nathan Slate 2008-11-12)
“A charming history of the roll with a hole, ranging across three centuries and two continents.”—Glenn C. Altschuler,
Forward (Glenn C. Altschuler Forward 2008-11-05)
“A delightful book that will enchant and educate its readers.”—Morton I. Teicher,
National Jewish Post & Opinion (Morton I. Teicher National Jewish Post & Opinion 2008-09-17)
“A fascinating topic and one that Maria Balinska treats superbly. . . . I especially admire her scholarship, lively prose and tireless reportorial digging.”—Joan Nathan,
Moment (Joan Nathan Moment 2008-11-01)
“The book, thought-provoking and fact-filled, is one that also uses the bagel as a way of viewing Polish-Jewish history.”—Mervyn Rothstein,
New York Times (Mervyn Rothstein New York Times 2008-11-26)
“[A] scrumptious little book. . . . The cover alone would whet any New Yorker’s weekend appetite.”— Sam Roberts,
New York Times (Sam Roberts New York Times 2009-02-01)
“Balinska gives readers plenty to chew on. . . . Thoroughly entertaining.”—Dara Horn,
Wall Street Journal (Dara Horn Wall Street Journal)
“[A] gem of culinary and social reportage.” — Sandra M. Gilbert,
The American Scholar (Sandra M. Gilbert The American Scholar)
“A good addition to the field of culinary history. . . . This witty, readable, deeply researched book deserves to be read. . . . Recommended.”—
Choice (Choice 2009-03-01)
“Charming and scholarly.”— Sheldon Kirshner,
Canadian Jewish News (Sheldon Kirshner Canadian Jewish News 2009-04-02)
‘[The bagel has] found a fresh and lively chronicler in Maria Balinska, who seems as much at home with the bagel’s Polish and Jewish past as with its all-American present … Light and piquant, and yet at the same time seriously satisfying,
The Bagel is anything but stodgy fare.’ – Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman (Michael Kerrigan The Scotsman 2008-12-13)
“. . . [A] history of and love-letter to Jewish culture. . . . ranges stylishly from the lifting of the siege of Vienna . . . through . . . the Nazi ghettos . . . to the post-war New York bagel-baking unions and the gradual transformation of the bagel into an ‘all-American’ food.” — Steven Poole,
Guardian (Steven Poole Guardian 2009-05-07)
About the Author
Maria Balinska is editor of BBC Radio’s World Current Affairs department, and a journalist and documentary maker specializing in Eastern Europe and the United States. She lives in London.
Wow! eBook
