Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture [Paperback]

The popular New Yorker writer combines the style of Mary Roach with the on-the-ground food savvy of Anthony Bourdain.

Dana Goodyear’s narrative debut is a highly entertaining, revelatory look into the raucous, strange, fascinatingly complex world of contemporary American food culture. At once an uproarious behind-the-scenes adventure and a serious attempt to understand the implications of an emergent new cuisine, it introduces a cast of compelling and unexpected characters—from Los Angeles Times critic Jonathan Gold, to a high-end Las Vegas purveyor of rare and exotic ingredients, to the traffickers and promoters of raw milk and other forbidden products, to the hottest chefs who rely on them—all of whom, along with today’s diners, are changing the face of American eating.

Ultimately, Goodyear looks at what we eat, and tells us who we are. As she places all of this within a vivid historical and cultural framework, she shows how these gathering culinary trends may eventually shape the way all Americans dine. What emerges is a picture of America at a moment of transition, designing the future as it reimagines the past. Food editors need people like [Dana Goodyear]. Anyone who can write so wisely and entertainingly about eating rarities is a rarity herself. —Slate

Dana Goodyear’s new book, about being a wallflower at the American food orgy, won me over on its second page. —The New York Times

It is precisely because I am not a foodie that I found such immense pleasure in reading Dana Goodyear's Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture. It was like reading Bruce Chatwin on Patagonia or Ryszard Kapuscinski on Ethiopia, maybe even Norman Mailer on war. I don't want to be there,lS&