Savor the Summer with These Mouthwatering Reads

Not unlike the hot dog itself, this book is a kind of freaky and totally spectacular medley: part travelogue, part cultural history, part love story, part raw (pun slightly intended) memoir. In the summer of 2021—the summer when “everyone decided the plague had ended even though people were still dying, the year after Americans had grown so nostalgic for something bad and familiar to them while locked inside that hot dog sales leapt by more than 100 percent”—comedian Jamie Loftus went on a road trip across America with her then boyfriend. Her goal was simple: She wanted to find the perfect frank. What she found instead was an uproariously funny, and under-told, history of America’s most mysterious meat. Pinballing from the aisles of Costco to the slaughterhouse floor, from the socialist history hidden in American meat regulations to the ahem… evocative sausage metaphors hidden in The Odyssey, Loftus will take you on a culinary carnival ride you won’t want to end (even if it makes you a little queasy). —Charley Burlock

In this delectable novel, a bestselling Southern California food writer joins a committee from her Unitarian Universalist congregation as they seek to hire a spiritual leader. Under pressure from her publisher, she agrees to chronicle the search as a memoir, with recipes sprinkled throughout. Huneven treats us to a savory plot that blends spiritual yearnings with earthly pleasures. Forks out! —Hamilton Cain

Nothing says summer like a barbecue—and no one does barbecue like Ed Mitchell, arguably the most famous pitmaster in the nation. Mitchell’s dedication to authentic, Southern, whole-hog pit cooking has taken him from local legend to national sensation. Over the years, he has shared his food with likes of Michael Pollan, Anthony Bourdain, and Bobby Flay. Now, in his first-ever cookbook, he is sharing it with the world. Teaming up food historian Zella Palmer with his own son (and fellow pitmaster!), Ryan, Mitchell guides hungry readers through the art of building a perfect fire, selecting a choice cut of meat, and preparing the necessary sides of deviled eggs and fried green tomatoes. But this is far more than a recipe book; Mitchell intersperses his cooking lessons with family stories, deep histories, and American reckonings. May we never forget that “where there is flavor, there is history.” —Charley Burlock

Like a fine wine with complex tasting notes, this alluring novel has depths to unfold. The first layer—a riveting behind-the-scenes portrait of a high-drama industry, from the chateau to the corner office—opens to reveal the story of a friendship between two strong, brilliant but very different women, which itself is built around an homage to the nearly magical pleasures and dangers of wine. Pour a glass and dive in. —Marion Winik

In this slim, spicy, genre-defining work, Rebecca May Johnson spatchcocks the division between intellectual and domestic labor, reimagining the kitchen as a radical “space for theorizing!” Like most of us, Johnson cooks daily but does not see herself, fundamentally, as a cook. Food is something she makes, eats, and is taught to see as distinct from—if not opposite to—intellectual inquiry. But while examining the domestic labor in Homer’s The Odyssey as part of her PhD research, she begins to rethink her assumption that cooking is thoughtless: “I decide to think with an onion, an orange, a tomato, a knife, a raging hunger.” Blending humor and academic citation, poetic lineation, and personal reverie, this inquiry into the nature of cooking is as delightfully messy as the process itself—some serious food for thought. —Charley Burlock