|
Why do so many Americans drive for miles each autumn to buy a vegetable that they are unlikely to eat? While most people around the world eat pumpkin throughout the year, North Americans reserve it for holiday pies and other desserts that celebrate the harvest season and the rural past. They decorate the front of their houses with pumpkins every autumn and welcome Halloween trick-or-treaters with elaborately carved jack-o’-lanterns. Towns hold annual pumpkin festivals featuring giant pumpkins and carving contests, even though few have any historic ties to the crop.
In this fascinating cultural and natural history, Cindy Ott tells the story of the pumpkin. Beginning with the myth of the first Thanksgiving, she shows how Americans have used the pumpkin to fulfill their desire to maintain connections to nature and to the family farm of lore, and, ironically, have revitalized small farms and rural communities in the process. And while the pumpkin has inspired American myths and traditions, the pumpkin itself has changed because of the ways people have perceived, valued, and used it. Pumpkin is a smart and lively study of the deep stories hidden in common, everyday things and the power of those things to make profound changes in the world around us. Buy the Book
|
NewsRecent: Listen to Cindy discuss pumpkins at That Shakespeare Life October 2022 podcast
Recent: Register for my virtual lecture Abolition and Pumpkin Pie for the Indiana State Museum and History Sites on November 16, 2022, 7pm-8:30pm Central time. Time magazine published a terrific story about Pumpkin to celebrate the start of the 2017 autumn season. Read the online the version here and find the print version of the October 2, 2017 issue of Time at news stands! Cindy joined Roz O'Hearn from Libby's on NPR's The Kojo Nnamdi Show from WAMU in Washington, DC to share pumpkin news, history, and recipes. Listen to the podcast from the live broadcast on October 14, 2015. Cindy spoke about pumpkin history on Evan Kleiman's Good Food radio show broadcast from KCRW in Los Angeles on October 3, 2015 The Associated Press "Pumpkin Spice: The Flavor of Fall, and a Hint of the Past" by Christine Armario, September 14, 2015, or see it adapted in CNBC, ABCNews, Salon, New York Daily News, foodandwine.com or your local newspaper! Listen to Thanksgiving Day BBC World Business Report interview with Cindy Ott from November 27, 2014 Read "Haters Call Pumpkin-Spice Craze an ‘Epidemic’: In Beer, Hummus and Dog Food, No Dodging the Taste of the Season" in The Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2014. Read A Pumpkin-Spice-Flavored Book Review by David Abrams, October 2014 Read interview of Cindy Ott with NBC New York's Gabriella Iannetta: "The Pumpkin Spice Story: From "Food of Last Resort" to Fall Flavor King", October 2014 Listen to interview of Cindy on One Day Radio, October 2014 Read Cindy explain pumpkin beer in All About Beer Magazine and The Beer Connoisseur Online Edition, October 2014 Read "Pumpkin Obsessed: Fall’s Favorite Fruit" in Tullahoma News, Sept. 18, 2014 
|
Rave Reviews
Have you ever really thought about pumpkins? Check out this fascinating natural and cultural history, by Cindy Ott.http://amzn.to/TMNMEs
https://twitter.com/michaelpollan
- Michael Pollan @michaelpollan
"Cindy Ott digs deeply and creatively in furrowing a few familiar and many elusive sources in this major contribution to American agricultural and sociocultural history." -Michael Kammen, The Journal of American History, Vol. 100(1), 2013
History Book Club Bestseller! Top 75 Selling Book in fall 2012
https://twitter.com/michaelpollan
- Michael Pollan @michaelpollan
"Cindy Ott digs deeply and creatively in furrowing a few familiar and many elusive sources in this major contribution to American agricultural and sociocultural history." -Michael Kammen, The Journal of American History, Vol. 100(1), 2013
History Book Club Bestseller! Top 75 Selling Book in fall 2012
“An original, carefully researched, engagingly written, even playful and witty foray into the exploding field of food history by an up-and-coming star in the field.”
- William Cronon, author of Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
- William Cronon, author of Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
Ott doesn't just discuss dessert and
Halloween; farming practices, our ideas about nature and the purity of rural
life, the creation of a pumpkin that does not reproduce but is easy to paint,
the infusion of pumpkin patches with moral values--all contribute to a
captivating book about an iconic American symbol.
- Marilyn Dahl, book review editor, Shelf Awareness
- Marilyn Dahl, book review editor, Shelf Awareness
