A wonderfully entertaining, often surprising history of presidential taste, from the grim meals eaten by Washington and his starving troops at Valley Forge to Trump's fast-food burgers and Biden's ice cream what they ate, why they ate it, and what it tells us about the state of the nation from the coauthor of Julia Child's best-selling memoir My Life in France. "[A] beautifully written book about how the presidential palate has helped shape America. . . Fascinating." Stanley Tucci. Some of the most significant moments in American history have occurred over meals, as U. S. presidents broke bread with friends or foe- Thomas Jefferson's nation building receptions in the new capital, Washington, D. C., Ulysses S. Grant's state dinner for the king of Hawaii, Teddy Roosevelt's groundbreaking supper with Booker T. Washington, Richard Nixon's practiced use of chopsticks to pry open China, Jimmy Carter's cakes and pies that fueled a detente between Israel and Egypt at Camp David. Here Alex Prud'homme invites readers into the White House kitchen to reveal the sometimes curious tastes of twenty-six of America's most influential presidents, how their meals were prepared and by whom, and the ways their choices affected food policy around the world. And the White House menu grew over time from simple eggs and black coffee for Abraham Lincoln.