Cindy Ott

Pumpkin (eBook, ePUB)

The Curious History of an American Icon

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

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 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 fulfull their desire to maintain connections to nature and to the family farm of lore, and, ironically, how small farms and rural communities have been revitalized 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 meanings hidden in common things and their power to make profound changes in the world around us.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: University of Washington Press
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Dezember 2012
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780295804446
• Artikelnr.: 44784956

Autorenporträt

Cindy Ott is assistant professor of American Studies at Saint Louis University.

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword Not by Bread Alone / William Cronon
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Corn, Beans, and Just Another Squash 10,000 B.C.E. to 1600
2. "The Times Wherein Old Pompion Was a Saint" From Pumpkin Beer to
Pumpkin Pie, 1600 to 1799
3. Thoreau Sits on a Pumpkin The Making of a Rural New England Icon, 1800
to 1860
4. "Wonderfully Grand and Colossal" The Pumpkin and the Nation, 1861 to
1899
5. Jack-o'-Lantern Smiles Americans Celebrate the Fall Harvest with
Pumpkins, 1900 to 1945
6. Atlantic Giants to Jack-Be-Littles The Changing Nature of Pumpkins,
1946 to the Present
7. Pulling Up a Pig Sty to Put in a Pumpkin Patch The Changing Nature of
American Rural Economies, 1946 to the Present
Notes
Bibliography
Index