Professors Carlin and Rosenthal are to be commended for their wide-ranging exploration of a subject we too often take for granted - getting food to the table and eating it. From the fascinating "Fast Food and Urban Living Standards in Medieval England" to the the grisly "Cannibalism as an Aspect of Famine in Two English Chronicles", this is a scholarly look at how another culture approached meals and eating. I could not put this book down. I found myself needing to know "Did the Peasants Really Starve in Medieval England?" and enthralled by "Driven by Drink? Ale Consumption and the Agrarian Economy of the London Region". And I still want to know how "From Michaelmas 1412 to Michaelmas 1413 Alice de Bryene served more than 16,500 meals at her Acton manor house". There's a lot about cooking in this book, and a lot more about history and economics, but it's eventually about people.