Book of the week: Appetite for America by Stephen Fried

(Bantam, $27)

Fred Harvey was once one of the most recognized names in America, said Jonathan Eig in The Wall Street Journal, but these days few remember who he was. In Appetite for America, Stephen Fried gives Harvey his due, more than 125 years after he opened the first of many restaurants, railway dining cars, and hotels throughout the West, creating what Fried calls the “first national chain of anything.” Harvey not only set “the gold standard of hospitality,” he was a pioneer in branding, said Jane and Michael Stern in The New York Times. So while the book provides a biography of Fred Harvey the person, it’s also about Fred Harvey the company, which thrived long after its founder’s death, in 1901. “When the business passed from Fred Harvey to his son and then his grandson, the brand never changed.” Tracing the chain until the final locations were sold in the 1970s, Fried provides an “expansive chronicle of dining out in America.”

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