Appetite For America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built A Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized The Wild West (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
There was a lot to like about this book: trains, restaurants, business philosophy, Americana, family history, the Southwest. It is long and it's a great credit to the author that I read steadily through till the end rather than skipping around, which I think is possible with a subject so enormous. I personally wanted more about the evolution of food culture in the USA, which was somewhat satisfied at the end with the set of recipes (macaroni and oysters, wow), but in general the Fred Harvey empire is a huge topic that is impossible to do justice to in one overarching book. Check out the acknowledgments, where the author lists the dozens of people who helped him put this thing together. A huge undertaking, deftly done. Eh, this is the beauty of being in a book club, I suppose--you're exposed to books that you might not otherwise have picked up. And this is most definitely one of those books, at least for me. I wasn't able to make the particular meeting in which we discussed this anyway, but I know quite a few of the other members enjoyed it a great deal (other than the length). So, I made it a fourth of the way through. If you're interested in learning about the development of the west in the late 1800s-early 1900s, you will love this book. Since it's not in the genre in which I normally read, I will not assign a star rating.
What do You think about Appetite For America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built A Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized The Wild West (2010)?
Just swell. 20th century history from another perspective, that of culture and food service.
—Rene
