After writing a book of origin tales, it is hard not to notice that most of them feature a central character—a Catherine de’ Medici, a Dom Pérignon, a Napoleon, or a Canon Kir—without whom we may never have heard of our favorite foods and wines. The protagonist in our own origin story must surely be our editor, Carl Bromley, who transformed a casual comment about a book idea into an actual published work. We can never thank him enough for his optimistic faith in our project and for his consistently excellent advice and commentary. This book literally would not exist without him.
We would also like to thank everyone at The New Press who brought our manuscript to life, and especially Benjamin Woodward, Emily Albarillo, and Michael O’Connor. We must also give thanks to our wonderful agent, Gary Morris, and his colleagues at the David Black Agency. Gary was an early enthusiast of our book idea, and we are grateful for his enduring support and encouragement.
Assembling illustrations for the book was not always a simple task, and we are very grateful to those who made it easier. In particular, we would like to thank David Nathan-Maister of the Musée Virtuel de l’Absinthe for allowing us to include the vivid poster celebrating the defeat of the Green Fairy, and Alain Cestari of Les Amis de Benjamin Rabier for granting permission to include Rabier’s early illustration of the cow that laughed. We are also highly appreciative of the digital archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, the New York Public Library, and Stanford University.
There are not many people willing to read hundreds of pages of rough drafts for free. We are extremely grateful to our collective parentage—Greg Mitchell and Barbara Bedway, Linda Grace-Kobas and George Kobas, and Anna and Alain Hénaut—for donating so much time to our efforts and for supporting us in such a wide variety of ways. Greg, Barbara, and Linda read our first draft and offered many astute comments and suggestions. Greg came up with the title of the book, while Barbara sent a steady supply of books and articles that proved enormously useful. Linda and George shared a treasure trove of World War II mementos from Jeni’s grandfather Victor Kobas, which inspired the closing chapters of the book. Anna’s masterful French cooking—you will never taste a more exquisite chocolate mousse—imparted a love of food to Stéphane from an early age and introduced Jeni to the exacting requirements of French cuisine when she joined the family. To all our parents, we offer our heartfelt thanks for helping us complete what once seemed like an impossible task.
We have both been blessed with marvelous colleagues in our respective lines of work, whose tutelage enabled us to write with any semblance of knowledge on food, wine, and war. Stéphane would like to thank the irrepressible trio of French chefs in the City of London who introduced him to the exhausting yet exhilarating world of the professional kitchen: Jean Deillon, Erwan Puel, and Eric Langé. Special thanks also to Zac Fingal-Rock Innes, who gave Stéphane his first proper cheese job, and to Ivo and Kathy Knippenberg for generously allowing him time off from the Knippenbergs fromagerie to travel and write.
Jeni would like to thank her colleagues in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, surely one of the best environments in the world for thinking broadly and deeply about humankind’s propensity for conflict over the centuries. Its founder, Sir Michael Howard, has long encouraged academics to produce “readable history,” and she hopes that this book might make some small contribution in this regard. In particular, she’d like to thank David Betz, David Easter, Marcus Faulkner, Menisha Gor, Mark Hawkins-Dady, Rachel Kerr, Peter Neumann, Anne-Lucie Norton, and Michael Rainsborough for their generous mentorship, inspiration, and congenial support. It has been an incredible privilege to be a member of the War Studies community these many years.
Finally, a special thanks to the lovely Michaela Poppe, who not only read the entire manuscript but highlighted all the bits that made her chuckle, and to Lillian Hueber and Karine Hénaut for their dear friendship and excellent photographs. And we’d like to thank all of our friends and family who kept us going throughout the writing of this book—those who kept us sane, kept us laughing, and kept us convinced that this was all a good idea, especially Monica and Keir Allen; Aicha Diakite, Johnny Kortlever, and Sonja Vilč; Lena and Aglaya Figurkina; Louise, Tim, and Florence Fuller; Adam and Renee Gibbs; John and Bronagh Heaney; Christophe and Betty Hénaut; Philippe Hénaut and Anne-Sophie Guimard; Muraguri Murungi; Kristina Stevens; Tim and Eline Sweijs; and Max Watson. You will never know how much you’ve encouraged and inspired us over the years, and we cannot quite believe our luck to have so many clever and convivial people in our lives. Here’s to all of our adventures, wherever they may lead.