Cheesemonger

Cheesemonger is a first-hand report about this countrys growing interest in handmade cheese from someone who buys and sells it for a living. Part memoir, part political food book, and full of information about how cheese is made, marketed, and sold, Cheesemonger demystifies how cheese gets from mammal to mouth.

Cheese consumption by Americans has tripled in the last thirty years. A new cheesemaking generation has rejected the factory methods for which America is (in)famous. These new American cheesemakers are making cheese of a quality that was unfathomable when Gordon Gordonzola Edgar began cutting and wrapping for a living. Cheesemonger is a memoir, capturing key moments in Gordons personal history that reveal how he came to a life of cheese by way of an unlikely path through subculture and activism. It is a food book, describing the way cheese is made, the sensory experiences of good cheeses, and some of the history of American cheesemaking. And it is a food politics book, detailing the contemporary urban/rural divide and the struggle that dairy farmers face in their attempts to stay on and make their living from the land.