I wrote a book!

The Burger Bible comes out on April 2.

I spent a considerable chunk of last year researching and writing a book about burgers. It comes out this week, and you can buy it in many places, including here and here and here.

I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I fell in love with human-interest storytelling as a journalism student in undergrad. I didn’t start my career as a food writer, but the seeds were sowed when I was in my early 20s, writing and editing articles about hedge funds for Reuters while I secretly researched culinary schools on my lunch breaks. When a recession forced me out of that job, I got a certificate in professional cookery then spent the next half-dozen years covering restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets. I became a freelance food journalist in 2014. Since then, I have cobbled together an odd, mostly satisfying career—spending several years as a restaurant critic and eventually establishing myself as a kind of observational comic of culture through the lens of food and drink.

Early last year, an editor from London publisher Headline reached out to see if I’d be interested in writing a food-focused book on a “specific, quite commercial” topic, which turned out to be a compendium on the humble, ubiquitous and much-beloved hamburger.

A tall order, no? Indeed, burgers makes up a staggering 60% of sandwiches eaten worldwide. The burger’s origin story is jealously claimed by half a dozen U.S. states. If I’d had 20 years and a million-dollar budget to write this thing, there’d be elements I’d overlook. So I started with what I know and I let my curiosity lead me.

I found, unsurprisingly, that the burger contains multitudes. Researching the countless guises of this affable handheld, I pondered deeper questions about cultural porousness, primordial urges, economic engines and food systems. I also tested my own linguistic limits while seeking as many ways as possible to convey the hedonistic pleasure of eating what’s essentially tricked-out fast food.

I’ve pasted a few excerpts below from the introduction and compendium of burger styles, along with a few profiles I love.

I hope you’ll consider buying one for yourself and/or for someone you love who loves burgers. Keep it on your coffee table or kitchen island—really wherever you’d like to have a bit of deliciously photographed burger trivia at your fingertips. I’ll end with a few concluding lines from the intro.

So here’s to the burger in its infinite guises: pillar of tradition and spurner of dogma, community builder and frequent point of contention, timeless emblem of profligate pleasure and friendly vehicle for progress, built across millennia and continents and yet conspicuously, messily, deliciously American. A handheld gift for all to share. But, like, order your own, OK?