Great Lakes Book Club: “A Culinary History of the Great Black Swamp” by Nathan Crook

Join us for our free 2026 virtual book club featuring books that give us new insight into our Great Lakes.

Grab some lunch and join us online for a guided discussion about this month’s book. Our March selection is A Culinary History of the Great Black Swamp: Buckeye Candy, Bratwurst & Apple Butter by Nathan Crook. Registered guests are not required to buy the book, but can purchase the book from our Museum Store.

Special note for this month’s club: Readers may want to start practicing their Northwest Ohio or other regional family recipes in anticipation of the March online book club gathering. We invite participants to share their family foodways anecdotes, recipes,  and/or prepared dishes via Zoom. 

When: Tuesday, March 3 at 12 pm

About the Book: 

The cultural and physical landscape of the Great Black Swamp is a monument to the hardship and perseverance of the people who drained and settled the region. They transformed densely forested wetlands into one of the most productive agricultural areas in the nation. Commercial crops of corn, soy, tomatoes and wheat are dominant in the fertile loam of southeastern Michigan, northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio. However, each immigrant group calling this place home brought its own culinary traditions—from pickled eggs to peanut butter pie. With a foreword by Lucy Long of the Center for Food and Culture, author Nathan Crook explores the landscape, history, culture and representative cuisines that make eating here a unique and memorable experience.

About the Author:

Bowling Green resident Nathan C. Crook, PhD, is a cultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor of English and Agricultural Communication at The Ohio State University’s agricultural campus in Wooster. He researches and writes about the myriad uses of food as a community identifier and a mode of communication. Lucy Long, PhD, is the executive director of the Center for Food and Culture, based in Bowling Green, Ohio.