FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ICE CREAM: A GLOBAL HISTORY

THE STORY BEHIND ICE CREAM’S RISE TO WORLDWIDE DESSERT STARDOM

Reaktion Books will release Ice Cream: A Global History by Laura B. Weiss on April 15, 2011.

This lively book looks back at ice cream’s enduring appeal to people around the globe—from George Washington’s ice cream cravings to today’s upwardly mobile Chinese—and celebrates the enormous popularity of a beloved treat that never goes out of style.

From Tel Aviv to Tallahassee, from Hollywood movie stars to London street urchins, ice cream has never lost its appeal through the ages.

With 60 color and black and white photos and 26 vintage and modern recipes from around the world, Ice Cream delves into the mysterious allure of this frozen concoction and its connection to powerful childhood memories—as well as the frozen treat’s link to the soda fountain and the ice cream truck. It’s not only America’s national dessert, Weiss explains, but New Zealand’s as well. The Japanese are mad for the frozen delight, while the Chinese and Indians are rapidly evolving into major ice cream consuming nations.

Weiss takes us on a journey from ice cream’s beginnings in ancient China to its present day evolution into an artisanal offering. Weiss even discovers that there is one thing the Arabs and Israelis agree on: their love for ice cream. Multi-national brands like Häagen-Dazs along with various native products dot the Middle East.

Nestled throughout the book are fun factoids. Which country’s ice cream is so thick you have to cut it with a knife? Turkey. Which NYC neighborhood was headquarters to many profit-hungry confectioners in pre-revolutionary times? Wall Street! How did a group of Israelis get into the gelato business? And just how much ice cream are the Chinese consuming these days?

Weiss explains that the Italians and French produced the first real products as pricey, frozen ices or sorbettos, meant for the upper classes. Soon, milk or cream was added and modern ice cream was born. It then made its way to England and the US.

Ice Cream really became Americanized, and available to ordinary people, with the invention of the mechanical ice cream machine and the creation of still-beloved street foods like the cone, sundae and ice cream bar. Meanwhile, the soda fountain and ice cream truck spread the delicious dessert first to every corner of the US and then around the world.

And it took shrewd small business owners—druggists expanding to include soda fountains, Howard Johnson who followed the World War II veterans to the suburbs, and pioneers like Baskin and Robbins and Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield—to help spread American ice cream products to overseas dessert lovers.

Ice Cream is part of the Edible series, dedicated to food and drink that explores the rich history of cuisine in the US, Europe, Asia and around the world.

Filled with striking photos and dozens of sweet facts, (did you know that movie producers once had to lure donkeys to perform in a Western with ice cream cones?) not to mention hard to find ice cream recipes, including sweet corn ice cream (from famed pastry chef Claudia Fleming), Ice Cream is the definitive and fun-filled guide for ice cream lovers, everywhere.

176 pages

40 color photos, 20 halftones

26 vintage and modern ice cream recipes

For more information contact:

Laura Weiss

laurabweiss@yahoo.com

To request galleys or a review copy, contact:

Carrie Adams

Promotions Manager, Distributed Books

University of Chicago Press

1427 E. 60th Street

Chicago, IL 60637

Phone: 773 702 4216

Fax: 773 702 9756

Email: coa@press.uchicago.edu

Also available through: http://www/foodandthings.com/ice-cream-book/

Amazon: Ice Cream: A Global History (Reaktion Books) http://amzn.to/e7RMyY

University of Chicago Press: http://bit.ly/flvPfy

Photo SNAP/ Rex Features

Library of Congress, Washington, DC (Prints and Photographs Division)

Sabah Arar/Rex Features