Food Will Win The War

During WWII, as Canada struggled to provide its allies with food, nutritionists warned that malnutrition could derail the war effort. Posters admonished women and children to “Eat Right, Feel Right” because “Canada Needs You Strong” while cookbooks helped housewives become “housoldiers” through food rationing, menu substitutions, and household production. Food Will Win the War explores the symbolic and material transformations that food and eating underwent during the war and the profound social, political, and cultural changes that took place in the 1940s. Through official food guides and policies, the state took unprecedented steps into the kitchens of the nation, transforming the way women cooked, what their families ate, and how people thought about food. Canadians, in turn, rallied around food and nutrition to articulate new visions of citizenship for their postwar future.

This engaging case study of food, conservation, and life during World War I brings alive the unparalleled, mostly voluntary efforts made by everyday Minnesotans to help win the war.

"In the pages of this appealing case study of food, conservation, and survival during 1917-18, food historian Rae Katherine Eighmey engages readers with wide research and recipes drawn from rarely viewed letters, diaries, recipe books, newspaper accounts, government pamphlets, and public service fliers. She brings alive the unknown but unparalleled efforts to win the war made by ordinary "Citizen Soldiers"--Farmers and city dwellers, lumberjacks and homemakers - who rolled up their sleeves to apply "can-do" ingenuity coupled with "must-do" drive. Their remarkable, largely volunteer efforts, carefully focused by university expertise and ubiquitous government propaganda, transformed everyday life and set the stage for the United States' postwar economic and political ascendance." --Book Jacket

U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.

The women who kept the farms going while the soldiers were Over There

In this wide-ranging and entertaining study Harvey Levenstein tells of the remarkable transformation in how Americans ate that took place from 1880 to 1930.