Publishers Weekly
11/07/2022
Science, history, art, and food come together in this quirky examination of eggs from journalist Stark (Pandora’s DNA). Stark proves to be an excellent storyteller as she charts the surprising role eggs have played throughout history and across cultures: she covers the “egg rush” on the Farallon Islands in 1848, when one could make a fortune with eggs; the horrors of industrial-scale chicken farming; the “clown egg registry” located in a basement in London, where famous clowns are immortalized by having their likenesses drawn on eggs; and how research done on eggs in space has taught scientists a great deal about human illness and physiology. Elsewhere, Stark muses on the favorite egg dishes of French chef Jacques Pépin (“While he was the chef at France’s top political household, he sometimes made deep-fried eggs as a first course for dinner parties”), and though she mostly focuses on chicken eggs, she discusses those of humans, as well, including some insights into how she came to love her own eggs after having her ovaries removed at 39 in an attempt to prevent the ovarian cancer that has plagued generations of women in her family. This delightful paean to the egg is equal parts fun, philosophical, educational, and irreverent. (Mar.)
Katherine Mangu-Ward
"The book’s 12 thematic chapters are dense and rich—like flan, but good."
BookPage
"Surprising, revealing and entertaining. After reading this delightful book, you will never look at an egg the same way again."
Mary Roach
"Crack this book like an egg and suck up 200 pages of Lizzie Stark delightfulness! Here is early career Jacques Pepin making sous vide eggs at Howard Johnson's! Gender-shifting chickens! Greedy eggers! Maniacal collectors! Egg is eclectic and funny, informative and endlessly surprising, but also deeply personal. (Stark's genes set her up with an ovarian cancer risk second only to hens'.) Like the egg itself, this book is a perfect, miraculous package."
Booklist
"Stark's perky prose and awe make for entertaining reading…Beyond the yolk and white, eggs are full of surprises."
Steve Almond
"Egg is one of those rare and voracious books that defies categorization. Lizzie Stark uses the egg as a means of hatching one startling inquiry after another. Like her culinary hero Jacques Pépin, Lizzie Stark makes magic out of the simplest ingredients: her insatiable curiosity, keen intelligence, and a literary style that is wry, elegant, and searching."
Florence Williams
"Egg bursts forth as a joyous triumph in the fresh field of body-part literature. Lizzie Stark writes with wit, verve, and warmth. I loved every page."
NPR
"Egg-squisite."
New York Times - Florence Fabricant
"Covers just about every aspect of the egg: biology, symbolism, health, medicine, art, culture, cultivation and, of course, cookery.… Even the practical uses of eggshells are described in the book’s lively pages."
Michael Patrick Brady
"Enlightening and entertaining…remind[s] us that even the simplest, most mundane objects may contain multitudes."
Terry Hope Romero
"Richly peppered with insight and a dash of humor, Lizzie Stark takes us on a fresh adventure to understand the humble foundation of life, the egg."
Jennifer Egan
"Egg is cheeky, playful, and deeply informative—in short, a complete delight."
Marie Mutsuki Mockett
"Lizzie Stark makes the egg her protagonist, tracing its biography in a dazzling probe of art, science, outer space, menus—and her body—across the globe. Imaginative and wildly original, Egg asks us to consider no less than the origin of everything and our role in maintaining the chicken-and-egg system."
