Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and Its Place in Western Civilization

Behind every traditional type of cheese there lies a fascinating story of how it came to be. By examining the role of the cheesemaker throughout world history, and exploring a few basic principles of cheese science and technology, author Paul Kindstedt (American Farmstead Cheese) shows how different cheeses have been shaped by and tailored to their surrounding environment, as well as defned by their social and cultural context. Cheese and Culture tells the story of how cheese history intersects with some of the pivotal periods in human history and in many cases shaped the lives of cheesemakers and the diverse cheeses they developed. Kindstedt has composed a grand narrative that binds all cheeses together into a single history, one that started with the discovery of cheese making in the neolithic age and that is still unfolding to this day.