Author

Vicki Oppenheimer was born in the Bronx, N.Y., in 1908. She went to New York City public schools and attended Hunter College. For many years Vicki worked for a literary agent, and she also published articles in major magazines on subjects dealing with travel, child care, the environment and food. World War II was a time of global upheaval, and as an army wife she left New York City and followed her husband, a Flight Surgeon in the US Air Force, to training bases around the country. After he was stationed overseas she worked with government agencies devising recipes which used non-rationed foods, and she also worked as food editor for Household Magazine.

In 1950 she returned to New York City; that year she and her husband were divorced. Vicki then joined Doubleday as a Literary Guild editor. In 1958 she married Armand Oppenheimer, an orthodontist who taught evolution of the teeth and mandibles at Columbia University and lectured at the Museum of Natural History. In his lectures and professional writing he stressed the environment as a controlling factor in shaping the evolution of man and the primates. Fortunately for humankind, there were remarkable concurrences of major phenomena: the appearance of the angiosperms (flowering plants that bore fruit and seed and nectar), the evolution of grasses, and the discovery of the use of fire for cooking, tenderizing and making food a source of enjoyment.

Vicki became intensely interested in this field of study and enrolled as a graduate student at Columbia University. In 1963 she received a master’s degree in Anthropology. She then pursued an exploration of food history in the New World and traveled to Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. She visited the sites where grasses, legumes, tubers and root crops were domesticated, cultivated and cross-bred to develop specimens suited to every environment and to a variety of tastes.

In 1991 she wrote "On the Nature of Food", now in its second edition. She continued her research on food, following a trail that led her to the Near East, Europe, Asia and Africa. The introduction of New World foods to Europe during the 16^th and 17^th centuries saved millions of people from starvation and enormously increased the entire world’s food resources and tremendous population growth. "The Taste Makers" tells this dramatic story. 

Vicki now lives in Naples, Florida. She is still vitally interested in world politics, education and, of course, food.

All material on this site is copyright 2003-2005 by Vicki Oppenheimer and Milpah Press. For information on the availability of the printed version of The Taste Makers, please write to us.

This page was last updated on 24-Nov-2005.