As you can tell by my bookshelves, this book defies categorization. Frankly, it defies the ratings system as well since rating inevitably assumes comparison and a relative score and this is so unlike anything I've ever read.
This, I grant, may speak to a narrowness of reading on my part.
What Twitty has done here is extraordinary; his writing is pitched exquisitely on every topic and his vastness of knowledge is matched only by his capacity to transmit it. This is not a book about which one can complain it is all over the place--it is all over the place, but it's supposed to be. As part of its genre-defying, it rebels against the idea that history and memoir, personal narratives and sweeping pronouncements about the nature of the world belong apart. Twitty weaves them together and not seamlessly because this book is all about seams. The Cooking Gene unpicks the threads that connect disparate history, making that which was woven into the cloth visible again. The term culinary archeology might be more precise. Then again, it's also an archeology of an individual and it is a testament to Twitty's skill that--even though the book is not an easy read and, like most multi course offerings, requires time to digest--one cannot imagine it any other way.