On June 24, 2026, the Topsfield Town Library was proud to host author Sarah Lohman virtually. We partnered with the Topsfield Historical Society to bring this exciting program to Topsfield! She asks: what is the state of American food on its 250th birthday? Watch this lecture below, as Sarah looks at all all the flavors, dishes and cooks that got us here, from the Indigenous ingredients that shape regional American cuisine, to the influence of the African kitchen, to the fast food revolution.
About the Speaker:
Sarah Lohman is originally from Hinckley, Ohio where she began working in a museum at the age of 16, cooking historical food over a wood-burning stove. She graduated with a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2005. For her undergraduate thesis, she opened a temporary restaurant/installation that reinterpreted food of the Colonial era for a modern audience. Lohman moved to New York City in 2006 and worked as Video Producer for New York magazine’s food blog, Grub Street. She chronicled her personal explorations in culinary history on her blog, Four Pounds Flour, from 2008-2018.
Lohman’s most recent book Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods, was released by W.W. Norton & Co. in October 2023. The book is a New York Times Editors’ Choice and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by Amazon, Food & Wine, and Adam Gopnik on the Milk Street podcast. Lohman’s first book, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, was released by Simon & Schuster in December 2016. An Amazon bestseller, the Atlantic called it “Richly researched, intriguing, and cleverly written.” Eight Flavors is currently taught in undergraduate classes at Purdue and Pennsylvania State University. Her third book, Ice Cream Land, will be released Summer 2027.
Over her career, Lohman’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, as well as on All Things Considered, CNN, Gimlet Media, and NHK Japan. She has appeared in PBS’s American Experience, The Cooking Channel’s Food: Fact or Fiction, and developed a historical food service for Taylor Mac’s a 24-Decade History of Popular Music.
Lohman works with institutions around the country to create public programs focused on food. She has lectured at diverse institutions including the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Museum of Science (Boston), the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and the Culinary Historians of Southern California. Lohman is based in Las Vegas.
