[Sca-cooks] New Book?

[The Sheltons]

Is anyone familiar with this book that was just published this month?  Some 
of it covers our time of interest, but I don't know anything about this 
author and how good her research is.

John le Burguillun


      "Charlemagne's Tablecloth: A Piquant History of Feasting" by Nichola 
Fletcher
            ISBN: 0312340680
            Format: Hardcover, 256pp
            Pub. Date: August 2005
            Publisher: St. Martin's Press
            List Price: $24.95





      FROM THE PUBLISHER
      Feasts, banquets, and grand dinners have always played a vital role in 
our lives. They oil the wheels of diplomacy, smooth the paths of the 
ambitious, and spread joy at family celebrations. They lift the spirits, 
involve all our senses and, at times, transport us to other fantastical 
worlds. Some feasts have give rise to hilarious misunderstandings, at others 
competitive elements take over. Some are purely for pleasure, some connect 
uncomfortably with death, but all are interesting. Nichola Fletcher has 
written a captivating history of feasts throughout the ages that includes 
the dramatic failures along with the dazzling successes. From a humble meal 
of potatoes provided by an angel, to the extravagance of the high medieval 
and Renaissance tables groaning with red deer and wild boar, to the 
exquisite refinement of the Japanese tea ceremony, Charlemagne's Tablecloth 
covers them all. In her gustatory exploration of history's great feasting 
tables, Fletcher also answers more than a few riddles such as "Why did 
Charlemagne use an asbestos tablecloth at his feasts?" and "Where did the 
current craze for the elegant Japanese Kaiseki meal begin? Fletcher answers 
these questions and many more while inviting readers to a feasting table 
that extends all the way from Charlemagne's castle to her own millennium 
feast in Scotland. This is an eclectic collection of feasts from the 
flamboyant to the eccentric, the delicious to the disgusting, and sometimes 
just the touchingly ordinary. For anyone who has ever sat down at a banquet 
table and wondered, "Why?" Nichola Fletcher provides the delicious answer in 
a book that is a feast all its own.