The Hamburger

Book by Josh Ozersky about the cultural history of the hamburger. Needless to say, the artifact is a lot more complex than one would've assumed. Who knew that White Castle was the original chain but for very complex reasons (both franchise-related and financial) lost out to the McD?

Great info on the reinvention of the burger in the 1970's as a 50's concept even though it was nowhere near as ubiquitous in the 50's. Rather, it was more of a 60's thing.

To put it differently, the nostalgia for the burger 'n shakes in the 50's never existed. It's a 70's marketing campaign imposing a false structure on past memory that never was.

And kudos to the author for compressing the entire narrative into a compact, well-edited, comprehensively-documented 133 pages!