Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in New Orleans

For much of the Crescent City's history, days began with the cries of roaming street vendors and the percussive thwack of butchers' meat cleavers echoing out from the municipal markets. Generations of New Orleanians—Black and white, enslaved and free, men and women, wealthy and working class—gathered in public to feed the city.

In Nourishing Networks, historian Ashley Rose Young illuminates the central role of food in shaping the vibrant culture of New Orleans. While the city's dynamic culi...