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E-book
Author Balinska, Maria

Title The bagel : the surprising history of a modest bread / Maria Balinska
Published New Haven : Yale University Press, 2008
©2008

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Description 1 online resource (xx, 220 pages) : illustrations
Contents The family tree -- Of bagels and kings -- Rituals, rhymes and revolutions: how the bagel lost its worth but kept its value -- Bagel polemics in an independent Poland -- Boiling over: the immigrant bagel and the struggle for workers' rights -- 'Kings of the line': the story of Bagel Bakers' Union Local No. 338 -- The 'bagelising' of America
Summary "If smoked salmon and cream cheese bring only one thing to mind, you can count yourself among the world's millions of bagel mavens. But few people are aware of the bagel's provenance, let alone its adventuresome history. This charming book tells the remarkable story of the bagel's journey from the tables of seventeenth-century Poland to the freezers of middle America today, a story of often surprising connections between a cheap market-day snack and centuries of Polish, Jewish, and American history." "Research in international archives and numerous personal interviews uncover the bagel's links with the defeat of the Turks by Polish King Jan Sobieski in 1683, the Yiddish cultural revival of the late nineteenth century, and Jewish migration across the Atlantic to America. There the story moves from the bakeries of New York's Lower East Side to the Bagel Bakers' Local 388 Union of the 1960s, and the attentions of the mob. For all its modest size, the bagel has managed to bridge cultural gaps, rescue kings from obscurity, charge the emotions, and challenge received wisdom. Maria Balinska weaves together a rich, quirky, and evocative history of East European Jewry and the unassuming ring-shaped roll the world has taken to its heart."--Jacket
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 196-210) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Bagels -- History
Jews, East European.
COOKING -- Courses & Dishes -- Bread.
HISTORY -- General.
Bagels
Jews, East European
Bagel
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780300142327
0300142323
9780807886861
0807886866
9780300150582
030015058X