"Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite is an important book that compellingly shows how high theory and cultural studies can be on the same menu. In doing so, Cultures of Taste persuasively demonstrates that any serious consideration of our social life must engage with Romanticism in all its historical, textual, and philosophical dimensions. This work is an impressive collection of writings ... Read morethat inaugurates the new field of diet studies in a wonderful manner." - Orrin N. C. Wang, University of Maryland, College Park "What kind of object is food, and what kind of engagement with the world is eating? The essays in Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite take up such unlikely questions with a remarkable combination of historical specificity and theoretical inventiveness. Via juxtapositions - be it dining with Kant or reading fish n' chips - that continually reveal unexpected points of intersection among a wide range of critical perspectives, they demonstrate the extent to which Romantic culture organizes and is organized by an economics, a logic, and a metaphorics of consumption. Together with Timothy Morton's fine introduction and afterword, they argue collectively for an empiricist criticism that would be open to historical experience precisely to the extent that it is conceptually experimental." - Joshua Wilner, City College and The Graduate Center-CUNY Show Less