"There is more history in a bowl of pasta than in the Colosseum." Food is history's longest account. The book is written from dinner at the table of a classic Roman restaurant. And goes out from there - out to the history of bread, out to finding the best wheat, out to losing the wheat and the people. Out to olive oil, across the fried artichokes,  on to lemons and the Mafia, they knew it was lemons.  This is pasta carbonara, deconstructed, and each literal detail sent flying through its history, its hopes and losses. This is Italian food, as the record of all. La cucina autentica. This is sugar, sugar and 12 million slaves deported to raise it. Not a photo in the pages, 232 pages, a lovely account of food and people, of taste and need. In a way, it is a long, two hour tale, at the table, about Italian food. Translated from Norwegian, better that it be an outsider.