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.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Yale University Press
ISBN-13
9780300112290
eBay Product ID (ePID)
96045999
Product Key Features
Subject Area
Social Organisations
Author
Maria Balinska
Publication Name
The Bagel: the Surprising History of a Modest Bread
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Subject
History
Publication Year
2008
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
224 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
178mm
Item Width
140mm
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Maria Balinska
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
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