Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar (28 page)

SCOTT ANDERSON
is the author of novels, nonfiction books, and screenplays for films, including
Triage
, which starred Colin Farrell as a war photographer. He writes for magazines that include
Vanity Fair
and the
New York Times
magazine. He is currently working on a book about T. E. Lawrence.

JASON BURKE
is the South Asia correspondent of the
Guardian
. He has been reporting from the subcontinent since the mid-1990s, excepting a few years working in the Middle East. His 2003 book,
al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam
, sold more than seventy thousand copies in Britain and has been translated into twelve languages. A second book,
The Road to Kandahar
, followed. A third book, a contemporary history and investigation of the wars, militancy, and campaigns against terrorism that have marked the first decade of the twenty-first century, will be published in 2011.

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN,
a senior correspondent and associate editor of the
Washington Post
, is the author of
Imperial Life in the Emerald City
, a best-selling account
of the troubled American effort to reconstruct Iraq. The book, which provides a firsthand view of life inside Baghdad's Green Zone, won the Overseas Press Club book award, the Ron Ridenhour Prize, and Britain's Samuel Johnson Prize. It was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2007 by the
New York Times
and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has served as the
Post'
s national editor and as bureau chief in Baghdad, Cairo, and Southeast Asia.

BARBARA DEMICK
is the Beijing bureau chief of the
Los Angeles Times
and a former Seoul correspondent. Her book
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
won the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for best nonfiction in 2010 and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

JANINE DI GIOVANNI
is an award-winning writer who has reported from war zones for twenty years. The author of four books, she is widely anthologized, and two documentaries have been made about her life and work. Her next book,
Ghosts by Daylight
, will be published by Knopf in 2011.

FARNAZ FASSIHI
is the Beirut bureau chief for the
Wall Street Journal
and author of
Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unravelling of Life in Iraq
. Fassihi has been reporting in the Middle East for more than a decade and covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She served as Baghdad bureau chief for the
Journal
for three years. She won six national journalism awards for her coverage of the 2009 Iranian election and uprising, including the Robert Kennedy Award for best international reporting and the Hal Boyle Award from the Overseas Press Club.

JOSHUA HAMMER,
Newsweek'
s Jerusalem bureau chief between 2001 and 2004, is now a freelance foreign correspondent based in Berlin. He is the author of three books, including
A Season in Bethlehem: Unholy War in a Sacred Place
.

TIM HETHERINGTON
was a writer, photographer, and filmmaker whose documentary film
Restrepo
won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar. He was killed while working in Libya in 2011.

ISABEL HILTON
is a London-based writer and broadcaster whose work has appeared in the
Sunday Times
, the
Guardian
, the
Independent
, the
New Yorker, Granta
, the
New York Times
, the
Los Angeles Times, El Pais
, the
Financial Times
, the
Economist
, and many other publications. Her particular interests include China, South Asia, and Latin America. She is the author of
The Search for the Panchen Lama
and appears regularly on the BBC.

LEE HOCKSTADER
spent thirteen years as a foreign correspondent for the
Washington Post
in Latin America, the former Soviet Union, Europe, and the Mideast. Now a member of the
Post'
s editorial board, he lives in Washington with his wife and two children.

SAM KILEY
is a writer, a broadcaster, and the author of
Desperate Glory: At War in Helmand with Britain's 16 Air Assault Brigade
. He has worked for the
Times
of London, the
Sunday Times
, the
London Evening Standard
, and Britain's Channel Four. In 1996 he won Britain's Granada Foreign Correspondent of the Year award for his coverage of the fall of Mobutu's Zaire. He is the security editor for Sky News.

CHRISTINA LAMB
is the Washington bureau chief of the
Sunday Times
of London and author of several books including the best-sellers
The Africa House
and
The Sewing Circles of Herat
. She has won Britain's Foreign Correspondent of the Year award five times. Her latest book,
The Wrong War
, will be published in 2011.

MATT McALLESTER
grew up in Scotland and lives in New York. As a correspondent for
Newsday
he covered numerous conflicts. He is a visiting professor of journalism at the City University of New York, a freelance magazine writer, and the author of three books, including a memoir of his mother,
Bittersweet: Lessons from My Mother's Kitchen
.

JAMES MEEK
was for many years a foreign correspondent for the
Guardian
and is the author of four novels, including
The People's Act of Love
, which has been translated into twenty languages. He was named Britain's Foreign Correspondent of the Year in 2004.

MATT REES
is an award-winning crime novelist and foreign correspondent who lives in Jerusalem. Rees covered the Middle East for a decade and a half for
Time
magazine and
Newsweek
. His series of Palestinian mysteries won the Crime Writers Association New Blood Dagger and has been published in twenty-three countries. His latest book is
Mozart's Last Aria
, a historical novel about the death of the great composer.

CHARLES M. SENNOTT
is the executive editor and cofounder of GlobalPost, a Web-based international news organization. He is the author of three books, including
The Body and the Blood: The Middle East's Vanishing Christians and the Possibility for Peace
. A longtime foreign correspondent and Middle East bureau chief for the
Boston Globe
, Sennott has reported from more than thirty-five countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and Israel-Palestine.

WENDELL STEAVENSON
is the author of two acclaimed books,
Stories I Stole
, about Georgia, and
The Weight of a Mustard Seed
, about an Iraqi general and the morally compromising times of Saddam Hussein.
The Weight of a Mustard Seed
was named a notable book of 2009 by the
New York Times
. She has written about the Caucasus and the Middle East for many publications, including
Time
magazine,
Slate
, the
Financial Times
magazine, the
New Yorker
, and
Granta
.

AMY WILENTZ
is the author of
The Rainy Season: Haiti since Duvalier
, and of
Martyrs' Crossing
, a novel. She is a professor in the literary journalism program at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Jerusalem correspondent for the
New Yorker
. She writes about Haiti for the
New Yorker
and other publications.

The writers in this collection all showed immense generosity, patience, energy, and forbearance, not to mention their great talents, and I am as grateful as anyone could be. Thank you. This is your book.

Flip Brophy, Felicity Rubinstein, Judy Heiblum, Sheila Levine, Darra Goldstein, Kate Marshall, and Emily Park made the book happen. They were all hugely kind and supportive. My friend Jen Banbury helped form the original idea.

My wife, Pernilla, was my greatest ally, as always. And in the midst of my collecting these tales of war and food our son, Harry, arrived in the world, fulfilling a million dreams and creating a million more.

The loss of contributor Tim Hetherington has left many who loved him somewhat lost for words. We are lucky to have his wonderful words in this collection.

1.
Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices
, by Andrew Dalby

2.
Eating Right in the Renaissance
, by Ken Albala

3.
Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health
, by Marion Nestle

4.
Camembert: A National Myth
, by Pierre Boisard

5.
Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety
, by Marion Nestle

6.
Eating Apes
, by Dale Peterson

7.
Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet
, by Harvey Levenstein

8.
Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America
, by Harvey Levenstein

9.
Encarnación's Kitchen: Mexican Recipes from Nineteenth-Century California: Selections from Encarnación Pinedo's
El cocinero español, by Encarnación Pinedo, edited and translated by Dan Strehl, with an essay by Victor Valle

10.
Zinfandel: A History of a Grape and Its Wine
, by Charles L. Sullivan, with a foreword by Paul Draper

11.
Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World
, by Theodore C. Bestor

12.
Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity
, by R. Marie Griffith

13.
Our Overweight Children: What Parents, Schools, and Communities Can Do to Control the Fatness Epidemic
, by Sharron Dalton

14.
The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book
, by The Eminent Maestro Martino of Como, edited and with an introduction by Luigi Ballerini, translated and annotated by Jeremy Parzen, and with fifty modernized recipes by Stefania Barzini

15.
The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them
, by Susan Allport

16.
Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food
, by Warren Belasco

17.
The Spice Route: A History
, by John Keay

18.
Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World: A Concise History with 174 Recipes
, by Lilia Zaouali, translated by M. B. DeBevoise, with a foreword by Charles Perry

19.
Arranging the Meal: A History of Table Service in France, by Jean-Louis Flandrin
, translated by Julie E. Johnson, with Sylvie and Antonio Roder; with a foreword to the English language edition by Beatrice Fink

20.
The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir
, by Amy B. Trubek

21.
Food: The History of Taste
, edited by Paul Freedman

22.
M. F. K. Fisher among the Pots and Pans: Celebrating Her Kitchens
, by Joan Reardon, with a foreword by Amanda Hesser

23.
Cooking: The Quintessential Art
, by Hervé This and Pierre Gagnaire, translated by M. B. DeBevoise

24.
Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century
, by Laura Shapiro

25.
Of Sugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream Making
, by Jeri Quinzio

26.
Encyclopedia of Pasta
, by Oretta Zanini De Vita, translated by Maureen B. Fant, with a foreword by Carol Field

27.
Tastes and Temptations: Food and Art in Renaissance Italy
, by John Varriano

28.
Free for All: Fixing School Food in America
, by Janet Poppendieck

29.
Breaking Bread: Recipes and Stories from Immigrant Kitchens
, by Lynne Christy Anderson, with a foreword by Corby Kummer

30.
Culinary Ephemera: An Illustrated History
, by William Woys Weaver

31.
Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar: Stories of Food during Wartime by the World's Leading Correspondents
, edited by Matt McAllester

32.
Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism
, by Julie Guthman