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What was eating them? And vice versa.
In What the Great Ate, Matthew and Mark Jacob have cooked up a bountiful sampling of the peculiar culinary likes, dislikes, habits, and attitudes of famous—and often notorious—figures throughout history. Here is food
• As code: Benito Mussolini used the phrase “we’re making spaghetti” to inform his wife if he’d be (illegally) dueling later that day.
• As superstition: Baseball star Wade Boggs credited his on-field success to eating chicken before nearly every game.
• In service to country: President Thomas Jefferson, America’s original foodie, introduced eggplant to the United States and wrote down the nation’s first recipe for ice cream.
From Emperor Nero to Bette Davis, Babe Ruth to Barack Obama, the bite-size tidbits in What the Great Ate will whet your appetite for tantalizing trivia.
Matthew Jacob
Matthew Jacob is the co-author of What the Great Ate: A Curious History of Food and Fame with his brother Mark. He started his career as a journalist, working as a sportswriter and city council reporter, receiving awards from the Arkansas Press Association. Jacob is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and has written for such outlets as the Boston Globe, Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today.
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Mark Jacob
Mark Jacob, a former Chicago Tribune metro editor, edited the columns that won Mary Schmich a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Everybody Needs an Editor is the ninth nonfiction book he has coauthored, with a tenth soon to come, a biography of Abe Saperstein, founder of the Harlem Globetrotters. Mark’s articles have been published in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, Library Quarterly, Chicago magazine, and Chicago History magazine.
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