Book & podcast collection

Egg: A Dozen Ovatures

byLizzie Stark

Lizzie Stark explores the egg as cell, food, symbol, commodity, tool, and object of fascination. Twelve “ovatures” move from chickens, penguins, and reproductive biology to cooking, art, crime, fertility, mythology, and industrial agriculture. The book explains the remarkable engineering of shells, yolks, and embryos while following the cultural meanings humans have assigned to them. Stark embraces the egg's central paradox—alive in possibility yet often consumed as an ordinary ingredient—and shows how one compact form can illuminate evolution, domestic labor, economics, ethics, and the human desire to understand beginnings.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Publication date

2022

Format

Print edition

Pages

—

ISBN

9780393531503