The Rituals Of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners

By Margaret Visser

This is the book on the way we eat.

Solidifying her standing as a preeminent observer and scholar of everyday life, Margaret Visser takes on the sweeping history of table manners, from the civilizations of ancient Greece and medieval Europe to the way that technology has altered, and continues to alter, our behaviour over dinner.

She writes of everything from cultural idiosyncrasies around preparation and consumption, to the surprising origins of tableware - forks took eight centuries to become common utensils, the plate began as a four-day-old slice of bread. Blending folklore, history, and humour, this is a feast of fact and observation on one of our most primal rituals: the meal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jun 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781443417327

Margaret Visser

MARGARET VISSER is an award-winning author and essayist. Her previous five books, all bestsellers, have met with international acclaim. Much Depends on Dinner won the Glenfiddich Prize for Food Book of the Year and was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly and The New York Times. The Rituals of Dinner won the IACP Literary Food Writing Award and the Jane Grigson Award, and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her most recent book, The Geometry of Love, also the subject of a prize-winning documentary film, was a finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize. A professor of classics at York University for 18 years, she now devotes her time to research and writing. Visser lives in Toronto, Paris and the south of France.

Reviews for The Rituals Of Dinner

[herschelian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A fascinating study of table manners, how they evolved, why we need them and how they differ from country to country, age to age.

[ladyars · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Exactly my kind of book. It takes one aspect of our lives and dissects it, comparing current beliefs and practices with other cultures and times. What I learned: culture is weird :)

What I didn't like: sometimes the author repeats herself and the ending was quite abrupt.