Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization

One of my favorite books I have read about food and history. I appreciated Professor Kindstedt's approach to writing. This is not pop history; it is the real deal. He artfully tells an expansive global history with cheese as the leitmotif, touching on everything from empire building, to the gendered and classed history of food making to industrialization and globalization. As a graduate with a degree in history as well as a serious lover of cheese, I found this book a joy to read from beginning to end.

This is the 'must have' reference book for Cheese lovers and /or anyone involved in the Cheese industry. Paul Kindstedt's scholarship is authoritative yet accessible. With the skill of a raconteur, he unfolds the place of cheese through thousands of years and many civilisations. I felt bereft when I finished this wonderful book - I wanted to hear even move.

Exceptionally good read if you are interested in cheese or how food is affected by and affects culture. Shared with a coworker who was equally engaged by it. Only drawback is a minor problem with the occasional missing word which seems odd for something written by an academic (sometimes you have a sentence that clearly should have included an 'an' 'the' or other small connective word). But it's not bothersome enough to throw you out of the text, and for an academic read it's not as typically dry and plodding as they usually are. My only caution is that it will make you CONSTANTLY hungry!!

I don't think most people think of cheese as an appropriate subject for a scholarly work, but it certainly serves that purpose here. Tons of citations and fascinating ideas not only about how cheese was shaped by the development of western culture but also about how cheese impacted that development itself. Really a fun read.

This book was OK, not great. I had hoped that this book would be to cheese what the book Salt was to ... well...salt, but it was a big let down. First, it is really dry in the beginning the author did not do a very good job of telling a story. I was actually warned by others that this book was dry, but I said it was OK because I liked dry cheese. :-) He basically just wrote down facts. He didn't breath any life into the subject, I know several people who gave up on the book at this point. You have to get through the first 50 or 60 pages before the book gets interesting. In addition, his Christian beliefs just permeated the book which really distracted from the subject. The author seems to focus almost the first half of the book on the Middle East. So much was spent just on Israel when I am sure that there was a lot to discussed in other parts of world in relation to cheese. I suspect that he has a great deal of interest in that part of the world because of his obvious beliefs. Most chapters open with Bible quotes or quotes from Christians in history. Whenever he could think of the thinest execuse to go into long, and at times tedious detail, of Christianity he would do so for pages. At one point he even works in a discussion of gnosticism!!! A good editor should have cut a lot of this. Please do not misunderstand me, I don't have anything against Christianity, but it was really a stretch to be so focused on Christianity in a book about cheese. If I want to read about Christianity, I will get a book on that subject. I wanted to read a book on Cheese. I mean rather than use all those pages discussing religion, it would have been great to read a discussion on cheese. He could have developed a better discussion on the various tyes and production methods. There was so much more that could have been said about the cultural impact. All this was undeveloped. Although I was very disappointed in the book, I still think it was worth reading. I just wish the author did a better job in sticking to the subject and really developing a good story about cheese.

I learned that my English forebearers (carrying the surname Cheeseman) were most likely cheesemongers, not cheese makers, as this craft was traditionally performed women. The more you know!

Excellent addition to a library of cheese knowlage.

It's the type of book where you skip around on reading it, as you may want to know about one cheese or the other. You would not read it from front to back. You would keep it with your cookbooks rather than story books. It would be handy then to take out and do research.

A great resource for all who want to learn more about their passion.

Very informative, good read, I highly recommend it. Not just about cheese, but a comprehensive history of western culture.

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Excellent, interesting from the start. Covers much more than just the role of cheese, which even by itself would have be sufficient.