Turning the Tables - by Andrew P Haley (Paperback)

About the Book

Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920

Book Synopsis

In the nineteenth century, restaurants served French food to upper-class Americans with aristocratic pretensions, but by the turn of the century, even the best restaurants cooked ethnic and American foods for middle-class urbanites. In Turning the Tables, Andrew P. Haley examines how the transformation of public dining that established the middle class as the arbiter of American culture was forged through battles over French-language menus, scientific eating, cosmopolitan cuisines, unescorted women, un-American tips, and servantless restaurants.

Review Quotes

Turning the Table is essential reading for anyone wanting to know more about the roots of the American passion for dining out.--Journal of American Studies

Turning the Tables is a significant contribution to existing scholarship on class, culture, and consumption.--Journal of Illinois History

Turning the Tables is an engaging read.--LA Weekly blog

[A] very interesting and useful study of the evolution of public dining in the United States." --Journal of American History

A sumptuous dish for anyone interested in middle-class culture of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, as well as an important contribution to the growing historiography around restaurant and food history.--Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Haley makes great use of an astonishing collection of sources, such as menus, trade journals, popular magazines, and cartoons, to produce an engaging history that sheds fresh light on the creation and meaning of the American middle class and that will encourage readers to think more deeply about their decision about where to go for dinner.--The Historian

Haley's book reinforces the importance of consumption as a vehicle for class formation and does immeasurable service in exploring restaurants as one of the important sites where this occurred.--American Historical Review

Haley's superbly researched study of changes in America's dining habits at the turn into the twentieth century explains much about shifting restaurant tastes in that century, and in ours.--Studies in American Culture

Like a good chocolate cake: rich, complex, and satisfying. . . . Haley stakes out bold, original claims. . . . A fine example of solid social and cultural history. . . [which] will help turn the tables on much established scholarship.--Journal of Social History

Scholars of food, culture, and the middle class will find this book useful . . . . It offers diverse sources and avenues for future exploration while establishing the prominence of middle-class dining culture in urban America.--H-SHGAPE