Michelle Stein

Whether eaten on the go, or leisurely enjoyed on a weekend morning, bagels are a vital part of most New Yorkers’ eating habits.  So, it only made logical sense to turn to Maria Balinska’s The Bagel for my next encounter with New York City in Yale Press’s books.  Of course, before sitting down to write, I grabbed a hot bagel (and its frequent pair cream cheese) from the famed H & H Bagels (which even appears in a photograph in the book) to prevent my appetite from growing, a problem I had while reading.

New Yorkers will realize immediately from the story Balinska tells that the bagel is not a New York invention, but an immigrant to the city.  The bagel’s heritage matches the melting pot that is the New York City we tend to see as its home, having peers in countries as far reaching as Italy and China.  Balinska looks most closely though at the development of the bagel in Poland as a product and part of culture, and the bagel’s ties to labor disputes in New York City.  One can look through the bagel to many of the societal questions in these two places.

Another fascinating element of the book, especially for those interested in the history of trends and marketing, is the story of the bagel’s developing popularity in America.  Today, few do not know what a bagel is, but this was not always the case, and the wide variety of marketing techniques that spurned on its nationwide popularity demonstrate the creative tactics used to make the bagel the well-known food it is today.  Just as the labor issues found in bagel-baking matched questions in the broader labor force, bagels’ increasing popularity also matched some of the same changes in the broader American food landscape.  Frozen bagels were both a major impetus for the travel of bagels across America and into homes in the same way other foods were frozen to increase their convenience.

For those looking to dig into both their meals and what is behind them, The Bagel is an essential addition to the current trend of food histories.  As we always forget while eating, our food takes a long journey to our plates, and in some ways the bagel took an especially far one.

Michelle Stein is a former Yale Press intern and recent Vassar College graduate.  She lives on the Upper West Side in New York.