The Rituals Of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners

The author of the beloved Much Depends on Dinner turns her acute eye and irresistable wit from the foods we eat to the way in which we eat them. The Rituals of Dinner explores our revealing, colourful, and complex world at the table, illuminating the spread with examples from formal dinners to picnics, from cannibalism to the Eucharist, and from the sublime to the ridiculous--depending on where you sit.

When we eat together, we bring our culture with us. Throughout history, table manners have been one way of domesticating some of the wilder aspects of human behaviour. In showing us why we act as we do, Margaret Visser provides insight into how we handle that mightiest of necessities--dining--and its most potent symbols.