Mark Kurlansky

You get a little taste of it when you eat vegetables from a backyard garden or a local farmer’s market. But what was America’s food really like in the 1930s and early 40s? We’ll explore that culinary culture this hour with bestselling author and James A. Beard Award-winning food writer Mark Kurlansky. His new book is “The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food–Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation’s Food Was Seasonal” (Riverhead, 2009).

Globalization and over-consumption are endangering natural ecosystems and traditional human economic systems the world over. We’ll explore one such example this hour with Mark Kurlansky, author of the new book “The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival of Gloucester, America’s Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town” (Ballantine Books, 2008).