:Monday, April 13, 2026 @ 7 p.m., central time via Zoom

 In American Bacon, Mark A. Johnson asks (and answers) a seemingly simple question: How has bacon overcome centuries of religious prohibition, cultural contempt, and dietary advice to become a twenty-first-century culinary and cultural powerhouse? Starting in early modern Britain and tracing the story of bacon through the colonial era, the Civil War, the Progressive Era, modern fad diets, and the emerging craft bacon industry, Johnson provides a new perspective on bacon’s story from “most dangerous food in the supermarket” to pop culture and gastronomic phenomenon.

MARK A. JOHNSON, from Milwaukee, earned a PhD in history from the University of Alabama. Previously, he earned an MA from the University of Maryland and BA from Purdue University. He currently teaches at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and is the author of An Irresistible History of Alabama Barbecue: From Wood Pit to White Sauce and Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacle, 1877–1932.

I’ve provided a link to the University of Georgia  Press’s website and Bookshop.org.

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Monday, April 13, 2026
7 PM Central Time via Zoom

If you have any questions or wish for a link, please e-mail: Culinary.Historians@gmail.com