Smokelore

A Short History of Barbecue in America

By: Jim Auchmutey

Narrated by: Chris Abernathy

Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

Barbecue: It's America in a mouthful. The story of barbecue touches almost every aspect of our history. It involves indigenous culture, the colonial era, slavery, the Civil War, the settling of the West, the coming of immigrants, the Great Migration, the rise of the automobile, the expansion of suburbia, the rejiggering of gender roles. It encompasses every region and demographic group. It is entwined with our politics and tangled up with our race relations.

Jim Auchmutey follows the delicious and contentious history of barbecue in America from the ox roast that celebrated the groundbreaking for the US Capitol building to the first barbecue launched into space almost 200 years later. The narrative covers the golden age of political barbecues, the evolution of the barbecue restaurant, the development of backyard cooking, and the recent rediscovery of traditional barbecue craft. Along the way, Auchmutey considers the mystique of barbecue sauces, the spectacle of barbecue contests, the global influences on American barbecue, the roles of race and gender in barbecue culture, and the many ways barbecue has been portrayed in our art and literature. It's a spicy story that involves noted Americans from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to Louis Armstrong, Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama.

©2019 Jim Auchmutey (P)2019 Tantor

the history of bbq

I loved the book. I'm a Comp Cook. it talked about the roots of BBQ. talked about different restaurants products that were invented, hasty bake, Royal Oak and the history of comps, segregation in the dark truth of it. it was a great listen

Good, but reads like a carbon copy of another book.

I love history so I don’t mind hearing about the same stuff over and over, but this book reads almost exactly like “Barbecue: The History of an American Institution” (2010) by Robert Moss in both chronology and seemingly “copied/pasted” text.

If it’s that easy to get a book deal, I’ve got some stories.