Andrew Zimmern’s Field Guide to Exceptionally Weird, Wild, and Wonderful Foods

One person’s “yuck!” is another’s “yum!” suggest Zimmern (host of the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods) and Mogren in this informative and surprising guide to world cuisine. The book achieves a graceful blend of off-kilter humor and sincerity as the authors focus on 40 unusual foodstuffs, including cockroaches, guinea pigs, headcheese, lutefisk, turducken, and Twinkies. Recipes, interviews, and a great many facts (“Brains are rich in phosphorous, proteins, and vitamins”) lead to amusing digressions, including suggestions on how to survive a zombie outbreak (our best weapon: collective intelligence) and a time line of popular dances, following a discussion of eating “dancing” (live) shrimp. While some readers will come for the shock value, this unflinching survey of global eating habits urges them to challenge their cultural assumptions and palates. Ages 8–up. (Nov.)