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We were not gods we were men, we had flaws, adams was an unbearable prick and squealed girlishly whenever he saw blood. Ben franklin if a crack existed in our day with the machine live at 80 pounds outside of the port authority. And i had slaves, i cannot believe i had slaves, did you know the all 92000 plus hours of book tv programming is Available Online visit booktv. Org told watchful programs on your favorite authors. On about books we dove into the latest news about the Publishing Industry with interesting insider interviews withwe Publishing Industry expes and will give you updates on andent nonfiction authors books, the latest book reviews and will talk about the current nonfiction books featured on cspans book tv. Welcome to about books in a few minutes will chat with youtube star turned author whose interest falls the intersection of history and cooking. First here are the latest news from the publishing world. In its midyear report the association of americann publishers reported that revenues were up slightly for publishers in 2023, looking at bookstores, publishing wholesalers and online retailers revenues were up 5. 6 billion for the first half of 2023. Two of the largest growth areas were Digital Audio sales up 18 and Higher Education of 10 . From book sales to book bands, publishing giant Penguin Random house has launched a new website tilt as a clearinghouse for those interested inon taking action against book bands and challenges. Whether you have ten minutes or ten hours to dedicate to this cause we outline clear ways to make a difference in your community according to the Penguin Random house site to ban books resource site hasnt banned books along with details on the publishers efforts to get these books back on shelves. They can be found online at Penguin Random house. Com band shbooks. In other news Publishers Weekly reports that journalists michael wolf has written a new book titled the fall, then the fox news in the murdoch dynasty. It is said to be published by henry holt at the end of september. Mr. Wolf is best known for his 2018 book fire and fury which offered an inside look at the playhouse and also writtentt a biography on Rupert Murdoch titled the man who owns the news as well as two other books on donald trump, the landslide and siege. One other note from Publishers Weekly, the publication announced the editorial director jim miller yet will retire at the end of this year. He hassp spent two decades in Publishers Weekly and was named coeditorial director in 2010. Executive editor Jonathan Segura will take over as editorial director in january. And now weve recently sat down with youtube star turned author max miller he has combined his love of food and history in his debut book that is entitled tasting history explore the past through 4000 years of recipes. Joining us Youtuber Max Miller the author of this new book, tasting history. Mr. Miller, first of all how did you get into cooking in the first place. It is actually a funny story i was on a vacation at disney world with my friend and she got sick so we spent thehe entire vacation in our hotel room watching the great reddish take off and i became enamored and i had never cooked or baked anything before but i love that ytshow so much that i decided to teach myself how to bake everything that they were baking. Over the next couple of years i did just that and thats how i got into baking in the historyy of food because they used to talk about the history of food on the show. What made you put this up on youtube, your experimentation. A friend of work. I would bring in my creations to my coworkers and let them try them but they had to listen to a lecture on history at the same time and one of my coworkers said you should put this on youtube and so i did and it worked out is been a comedy subscribers do you have now. I pass 1. 7 million. When and how did history become a part of your cooking show. History was really the beginning of it. Ive been a fan of history since i can remember since i was a little boy listening to my grandfather stories which to me was history. Really food for me was a way to explorea history and its a way to put myself in the shoes of people who lived in the past, getting to you what they mightve eaten. History is the crux ofow the shw and food is the way that i presented. With George Washington recognize what we eat today . I think many things yes but definitely not in the current form. Food was definitely simpler. We have so many more influences from International Cuisine in so many other ingredients that were available but there were a lot of ingredients then that were more popular. They used to but not megan everything during the late 18th centuries in the u. S. We dont use that verybu often anymore. There are similarities but a lot of differences as well. What was the purpose of not megan. Was a flavor that was very popular. Flavor comes and goes throughout the ages. For the most hundred years, saltandpepper have been the spices ofs choice, that is on e table when you go to a restaurant, that is always been the case. In the past it was not made for a long time it was sugar if you were wealthy. Different spices comee and go in that changes now and different parts of the world youre looking to find those spices on a table in japan it would be something else. Its always evolving. How were you able to find the ancient recipes and how far back do they go when tasting history . Oldest recipe that i found comes from 4000 years ago from the yell babylonian tablets and they formed tablets that have very early recipes. Probably the earliest recipes that we have. Most that i find are from old cookbooks all text and whatnot that i found. A lot of museums and library put their work online so i can go through and find whatever i need but there are some that come from problems or stories or diary entries and those are a little bit more difficult to find but there often the more interesting ones because theyre not written as recipes so there is a little bit more detective work on my end that i have to get to do. Or some of these recipes included, some of the ancient recipes . Absolutely the book goes through the last 4000 years they start in babylon and go through h a egypt and greece and rome through Medieval Europe through ancient china and the middle east all the way through the 19 teens. Both go back to the 4000yearold recipe what was it and were you able to recreate it. I was there were a number of recipes in the text the ones that i did were a deeps to the hudson layman it and then a lamb stew that is more focused onn te lamb and has milk and proto croutons and give it a texture in a crunch. I recreated both, the thing is without all the recipe, there are words that have no translation, scholars cannot really agree. Their best guess but thats it, there are always holes and you have to be okay with that and make the best version that you can. Did you ever have trouble finding some of the ingredients that you needed for the older recipes . Absolutely some unfortunately simply dont exist anymore. If they do exist they have changed. Ingredients have changed over the last 100 and definitely thousands of years and some are difficult l to find. The sheep that should be used in the old recipes is fat tail sheep, those are still around but the very difficult to find especially in Southern California so i had to use meregular sheep meat which was fine but yes sometimes it is impossible and sometimes its so difficult have to be okay using a modern version but the point of the book is to let people make these at home so i never wanted to be too difficult i always give you an alternative. You did modern updates to these recipes. Absolutely. I started the channel during lockdown so i was in my condo and did not have a lot of access to anything that was in at the corner store so i made the show dishes that you can make and get most of the ingredients but once in a while i will throw in an ingredient that is too interesting to not tryry to useo sometimes after going to the internet to find those. That is part of thewe fun as we. Were there some recipes that you just got started and could not finish because the taste did not appeal to your modern sensibility or you could not find the right ingredients. When it comes to the taste that part of the fun of the show, those recipes ended up not being very good did not make it into the cookbook but on the show i go all the way and even if its a terrible tasting dish i still tasted because its a history that become so important but i will be quite honest in the show and say dont make this this is definitely a dish that is become extinct for a reason. Florence nightingale appears in tasting history, what is the connection. I do a recipe for Bread Pudding that was served during the civil war and hospitals on the union side in that recipe comes from originally a recipes during the crimea were and wouldve been served in the hospitals that florence itnightingale worked in and its very good its not like red pudding we know today its an esteemed pudding that is popular in england who and its interestingse the foods that wee being served to those that were wounded were quite different than the people that were actually doingfi the fighting. It was like if you going to the hospital you get to eat better so that was the one upside of being wounded. Did you find theres times in history where shortcutsts were made because they had to be such as wartime. Absolutely lately ive been doing rationing videos during world war i and world war ii and before that of course rationing was always an issue so you would have to deal with not having access to ingredients, the sugar beet actually in general came about during the 19th century when sugar was not being imported to mainland europe because the english blockaded it from napoleon so they developed sugar from the sugar beet to get sweetness into their food. We can talk about the history of food without talking about rome. Would we recognize some of the ancient rome foods of the eight . Yes there are some that are not to change their early forms of french toast and omelettes but one thing that is extremely different that many of the recipes that we could kind of recognize use very different ingredients that we would never use which is a fermented fish sauce that we used in almost everything even desserts would have this fermented fish sauce it blends a complex in the saltiness to their food but not sunday that we would typically use today is. Pat who is rufus estes. A man born into slavery and after the civil war he began learning how to cook and he worked his way all the way up to being the head chef for the Pullman Car Company which was a very fancy train car ford the elite of america and he really created a cuisine that was used in the train cars for decades afterward and he became one of the top Celebrity Chefs in america. His story is absolutely fascinating in his cuisine is interesting is the combination that the foods that he grew up eating along with the foods of the wealthy and the elites combined together. It is wonderful wonderful foods. Over the span of history that you looked at has there been consistent ingredients are consistent foods that are still eaten today. Is usually the easiest ones to grow and get, onions and garlic and oils of any kind. The basic ingredients appear all over the world and all throughout cuisine injector under general. One thing that always appears in different forms and spices. Every want spices to change the foods. While the spices have changed, the desire tore get them even se are laborious to produce, everyone loves spices in some way or another throughout history. What about breads and grains. Absolutely. Bread is the staple of most diets honestly in some way shape or form. The way that it is made hasnt really changed all that much, you flatbreads ands raisin bred were lemon bread and yeast, salt, flour and water that is all that sin most of them into many types of bread throughout history but those four ingredients is Pretty Amazing how many variations that come up with a few ingredients. When you look at this history what about culture and religion playing the role on the development of recipes. Religion, food is culture that is definite, you contract the way people migrated throughout the world based on the foods that they brought with them and intermingle how its changed as they met with other cultures, sometimes not so friendly. When it comes to religion, food has always been an important part of peoples lives i think that we dont really appreciate it the way the people used to because of the amount of time and labor that went into getting food that its always been a part of religion because food was truly life and even one of the earliest recipes for beer its actually a him who is the goddess the beer in ancient samaria and its a list of what you do to make this early form appear and it was considered a sacred drink but it was also a drink that you could drink every day, they are intertwined and always have been. What is the connection if there is one between pretzels and monks. Pretzels have a lot of stories that grew up around the creation and nobody really knows how theyd. Were created but many of the original stories say they were createds. By monks, some sy they were created to mimic the shape of crossing your arms against your chest when youre in prayer, others say they were created by monks during a siege of vienna when the turks were coming in and the ended up making these pretzels down in the basement as they heard the turks burrowing underneath the city walls but there always connected with monks. If you go back to midevil art, the pretzel is often shown on the table during the last supper which it definitely did not exist at that time but it did exist in the midevil version of the last supper you have different saints and pretzel sidebyside. Max miller youre appearing on cspan and we can go too long without talking about politics first Lady Lucy Hayes makes an appearance and taste of history. Yes lemonade lucy she did not call herself that but many people did in a not nice manner, she was 80 tobler and part of the Prohibition Movement years before prohibition went into effect but part of that movement so she promoted lemonade as a way to get people too stop Drinking Alcohol and instead they could have lemonade, she and her husband made lemonade in the white house. Its unclear how onboard he was with this but she seemed to be theharge when it came to beverages of the white house so she got the nickname lemonade lucy. On opposite end of the spectrum was the lemonade praise. The london gin craze was a period in the 18 century when so much jen was being consumed by the population in london, pint of gin and day per person that they essentially had to bna, there were more gin outlets in london than there were businesses in london today. It was a crazy time because much of the gin was adulterated and had arsenic in different ingredients that could kill you and it became such a problem in the government has to step in and push people away and instead got them into beer. Another recipe that you have an tasting history is the sole cake. What is that. Sold cakes are one of the early forms of trickortreating, people would rgo around just after halloween and sing to their neighbors asking for these cakes that would have across on the more other symbolisms. It was basically you give me the sole cake and i will pray for your loved ones who have passed on and it was the early form of trickortreating, obviously we go for candy and its more of a fun thing but in the early days it was rather serious but still a lot of fun. Who is your coauthor. She is absolutely fantastic. When it comes to recipe writing there is an art to getting what i do in the kitchen to be replicated by someone who is just reading the words on a page in its a skill that i and many cooks do not possess so she does have that skill so she took my ramblings and formatted them in a way that will let you make things in the kitchen. We have to remember the role of marine in this book Andrew Youtube success. Marine is the one that got sick on the vacation and kept me in the hotel room while we were at disney world and watched the Great British bakeoff. I credit for giving my passion for baking even though it was just by watching the tv show. She is also the one in the early episodes i would think about when i was writing my script and talking to the camera, this is how i would tell my friend about whatever i was baking that day. What did you learn in the writing of this book and looking at the history if you had to put in a sentence or two, what did you learn. Two contradictory things, one art tastes have changed wildly in many ways they become much more sophisticated andre accesso ingredients and taste in our cuisine is more varied today than anytime in the past. On the other hand we have not changed that much. Our passion for food and attentionn to what food means to the cultural significance of having fancy food on the table and being able to take people out to nice restaurants and back then it was having the food at your house but it was a way to impress people who havent changed alldi that much. Twogs contradictory things. Maximal is author of tasting history with the past through 4000 yearsre of recipes. We appreciate you being about tv. Thank you so much for having me. You are watching and listening to the about Books Program and podcast produced by cspans book tv. It is tuesday dozens of newty books are published. Here is is simple. All below takes up the topic of human contact with an alien life form in his new book interstellar the search for extra terrestrial life and our future and the stars. Also Investigative Reporter Jerry Dunlevy and army captain and afghanistan veteran are out with their book on the 2021 u. S. Withdraw from afghanistan it is titled cobble the untold story of bidens fiasco and the american warriors who fought to the end. One highprofile book set to be released after labor day with Atlantic Staff writer franklyn indivisible could but the first two years of the Biden Administration entitled the last politician inside of Joe Bidens White house in the struggle for americas future. Political noted that he conducted nearly 300 interviews for more than 400 page book. Coming up on her weekly after Words Program Investigative Reporter Alexander Robbins authors a behindthescenes look that the issues teachers are facing in the classroom, her book is called the teachers i year inside of americas most vulnerable important profession, here is a preview. Everything that we talk about teachers unions are asking for is not just to better the environment for the teachers. Teachers working conditions are childrens learning conditions. If teachers are asking for a better hvac system, that is important for the kids to sit comfortably and learn as it is for the teachers which should be the proper working environments. If were talking about salaries for example, it is been shown that students have significantly higher math and english standardizeded test scores in districts up ap teachers a higher base salary. It makes total sense. If the teacher doesnt have to work a second job h after school she can have more time to devote to think about how do i differentiate this lesson so my gifted students and struggling students of the students in the middle get all that they can out of it. Everything that we talk about Teachers Working Conditions and everything that we improve will improve schools for students. A reminder after words airs every sunday evening at 10 00 p. M. Im eastern time. Thank you for joining us for about books, the programming podcast produced by cspans book tv room. Book tv will renew publishing news and author programs and a reminder that you can get this podcast on our cspan now out in all book tv programs are available to watch online at booktv. Org in the past 25 years booktv has been on the air over 1300 weekends covered 900 book festivals and feature 22000 authors including this event. I am amazed that eisenhower and nixon got along as well as they did. When you think about your two president s rumbling around together, a president is going to be someone who is very driven, he has an agenda, he has a vision, he knows where he is going, you have Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon as 39 becomes Vice President showing signs hes on his way. The fact that they got along so well as well as they did i would say is a testament to several things but first of all eisenhower should be praise because he made the vice presidency significant, he sent my parents to 53 nations around the world as goodwill ambassadors they were in vietnam in 1953, they were in africa and asia and all over the world, 53 nations because he believed in person to put under person diplomacy so he uses vice presidency and i think my father like that. Lets say eisenhower led the way on that relationship. I spoke to a lot of my grandfathers colleagues including eisenhower and one in particular was lynn hall Theodore Roosevelt Republican National chairman of the Republican Party i interviewed him in oyster bay new york very close to Teddy Roosevelt homestead some years ago and i asked in the very question in a think he wouldve agreed with your response entirely the Dwight Eisenhower was not somebody that enjoyed campaigning but he said the two greatest natural politicians, the two greatest natural politicians that he seen in his entire life were al smith and Dwight Eisenhower. All 92000 plus hours of book tv programming is Available Online, visit booktv. Org to watch the full program on your favorite authors. An extra day of book tv on cspan2 this labor day, some of the programs include u. S. Court of appeals on clarence thomas. It look at Vince Mcmahon and how professional wrestling has impacted politics and how american politics is fueled by wealth and how to hold elected officials more accountable, find a full schedule online at booktv. Org. Starting now we bring you to chicago for the festival. Historian deborah colin on four american journalists who landed exclusive interviews with hitler, mussolini, meru and gandhi and shape the way americans all the world in the 1930s and 1940s. Thank you so much for joining us today