"It's not a light read, but covers an important subject: how feasting is at the heart of human identity.Feasts were what gave meaning to an otherwise dull existence. Communities have been held together by the foods they celebrated with, from the beer and bread of Mesopotamia to the wedding meat-banquets of east Africa." -- The Telegraph "Feasting, anthropologist O'Connor (Univ. College London) argues, has received less attention but is an ideal--and universal--phenomenon that reflects key elements of social life: issues of power, status, and competition; celebrations of the sacred and secular, place and time; mobilization of people and natural resources; and much more. The author draws on textual and museum sources to write an anthropology of history that focuses on sumptuous meals, their participants, and the historical context. Six core chapters cover feasting practices from ancient to early modern times practiced by Mesopotamians, Assyrians and Achaemenid Persians, Greeks, Mongols, Chinese, and Japanese. Each case study presents detailed snapshots of historical moments illuminated by feasts understood in cultural context .

Readers are left with a clear idea of the importance of feasts in human history. Summing Up: Recommended. Most levels/libraries." - CHOICE "Food is not only good to eat and, as Lévi-Strauss insisted, good to think with but also-to paraphrase Clausewitz-the continuation of politics by other means . It is also perhaps more true in the past, in the glory days of empires and emperors, than today, as illustrated in Kaori O'Connor's new survey of classical feast practices . the book is interesting not only for what it teaches about the past but also what it suggests about the applicability of anthropology to the past and not only to sites where we can do ethnography." --Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database "The Never-Ending Feast provides a well-rounded and engaging introduction to food studies, the feasting practices of antiquity, and their social capital for undergraduates and scholars. The images throughout the book are well chosen and reproduced, and typographical errors are minimal.

The range of sources used is extensive, and O'Connor's skillful contextualization of them and the associated religious and political ideologies demonstrates the potential these 'remains' of ancient feasts have . this text is an excellent introduction to anthropological approaches to food and ancient feasting." -Jessica M. Romney, University of Calgary, Bryn Mawr Classical Review "Kaori's pioneering work draws on anthropology, archaeology, and history to look at the dynamics of feasting among the great societies of antiquity renowned for their magnificence and might." - Reed Magazine.