May We Suggest: Restaurant Menus and the Art of Persuasion

This is an excellent book. Many of us hold menus in our hands or look at them on various kinds of boards all the time without ever giving it much thought. Pearlman has given those menus a lot of thought and has produced a work that addresses questions of the economics, culture and politics of food and restaurants. However, she does this in a way that is compelling, fun to read and intellectually rigorous.Pearlman has succeeded in writing an academic book that will be valuable to scholars of schools and restaurants, a category to which I do not belong, as well as generalists interested in thinking a little more about restaurants, menus and food. After reading this book, I will never look at a menu the same way again.I should warn you that at times the book will make you hungry, but that is part of the fun of reading the book as she author is clearly somebody who not only writes about food, but enjoys it and brings that to the page as well.

I found the book interesting, and certainly learned much about menus and their impact on choices, but it is hard to fathom that the publisher and the writer did not include images of menus - old and new. The book is about text and image (menus are certainly designed, not just text) and you have to see it to fully understand it. A definite weakness.