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Dinner with the president : food, politics, and a history of breaking bread at the White House / Alex Prud'homme.

by Prud'homme, Alex, author.

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New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2023.

White House (Washington, D.C.) -- Miscellanea.

Presidents -- United States -- Biography.

Food -- Political aspects -- United States.

Food habits -- United States.

9781524732219 (hardcover) :

1524732214 (hardcover)

xxvii, 478 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

Introduction: At the president's table -- George Washington : the first kitchen -- John Adams : the first host -- Thomas Jefferson : America's founding epicure -- James Madison : his rotundity, her remorseless equanimity -- Abraham Lincoln : corn dodgers, gingerbread, and Thanksgiving -- Ulysses S. Grant : the drunken tanner, the military genius, and the first state dinner -- Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft : two bears -- From Wilson to Hoover : collywobbles and a hail of rotten tomatoes -- Franklin D. Roosevelt : the gourmet's lament -- Harry S. Truman : burbon, Berlin, and the comforts of fried chicken -- Dwight D. Eisenhower : the president who cooked -- John F. Kennedy : Camelot and clam chowder -- Lyndon B. Johnson : how barbecue led to diplomacy and chili led to civil rights -- Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford : the gastrodiplomat and the instant president -- Jimmy Carter : in search of grits and peace -- Ronald Reagan : jellybeans, weight-loss, and glasnost -- George HW Bush : the yin and yang of broccoli -- William J. Clinton : torn between renunciation and appetite -- George W. Bush : tee balls, freedom fries, and changing of the guard -- Barak Obama : the president with the global palate -- Donald Trump : the food fighter -- Joseph R. Biden : we finish as family -- Conclusion: The importance of eating together.

"Perhaps the most significant meals in the world have been consumed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by the presumptive leaders of the free world. Thomas Jefferson had an affinity for eggplant and FDR for terrapin stew. Nixon ate a lump of cottage cheese topped with barbecue sauce every day and Obama regularly had arugula. Now, Alex Prud'homme takes us to the dining tables of the White House to look at what the presidents chose to eat, how the food was prepared and by whom, and the context in which the meals were served, making clear that every one of these details speaks volumes about both the individual president and the country he presided over. We see how these gustatory messages touch on not only sometimes curious personal tastes, but also local politics, national priorities, and global diplomacy-not to mention all those dinner-table-conversation-taboos: race, gender, class, money, and religion. The individual stories are fascinating in themselves, but taken together-under the keen and knowledgeable eye of Prud'homme-they reveal that food is not just food when it is desired, ordered, and consumed by the President of the United States"--

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