Book Review: How New York Jews made pickles a big dill

Forward Culture reporter

"The Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles""

By Paul van Ravestein and Monique Mulder

Chronicle Books, 224 pages, $27

"Pickles are a favorite food in Jewtown," muckraker Jacob Riis, referring to the Lower East Side, wrote in "How the Other Half Lives," his seminal exposé on poverty. "They are filling and keep the children from crying with hunger. Those who have stomachs like ostriches thrive in spite of them and grow strong - plain proof that they are good to eat."

Other thinkers from the turn of the last century disagreed, one lamenting, of the children of New Y...