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Van Loon uses his own nostalgia for the Netherlands as a way into that connection. The food is a connector in this volume in much the same way as some views of European history see the Middle Ages as a connector between Classical and Renaissance history. I enjoyed the book as a whole, but I kept returning to the food in it and wondered how Van Loon knew what people ate. The reason I have a copy is that, of all the novels I read, this most pushed me into food history when I was a child. The Early Middle Ages (what used to be thought of as the Dark Ages) is almost invisible on such lists. This doesn’t mean the Middle Ages doesn’t appear on lists of Great Men and Great Events – it means it is small compared with other periods’ presence. When people make lists of things that are historically important, some periods will take precedence. I suspect this view of the Middle Ages – which dates right back to the time when the term “the Middle Ages” was invented – is still particularly important for the Great Men and Great Works of History. Classical history and Early Christian and everything Reformation and Enlightenment were of far more interest than the Middle Ages. The biggest reminder it gives me, every time I open it, is that the Middle Ages was a sandwiched period for Van Loon and may like him. The balance of the guests relates strongly to popular perceptions of history both in the Netherlands and in the United States. Peter the Great, of course, dines with Voltaire. These two things are very closely related. The choice of the great people Van Loon and his best friend dine with shows what kind of cultural environment he lived in, and how he saw history. Or I could call it a novel about dinner parties with dead people. My personal label for it is this-is-fantasy-fiction-but-it’s-acting-as-fact.

They come to dinner at his home in the 1930s. Each chapter is a dinner party (not always successful) between Van Loon himself and various famous (dead) people. It’s a very simple construct, and an old one.

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