In Crust We Trust

What This Book Covers

1. Chapter One - The Sacred Origins
2. Chapter Two - Ellis Island to Extra Cheese
3. Chapter Three - The Domino Effect
4. Chapter Four - Pizza Hut, Pan Wars, and the Rise of the Corporate Pie
5. Chapter Five - Little Caesars, Big Energy
6. Chapter Six - Chuck E. Cheese and the Animatronic Cult of Birthday Pizza
7. Chapter Seven - Frozen Empires and the Grocery Store Kingdom
8. Chapter Eight - The Noid Was Avoided
9. Chapter Nine - Turtles, Simpsons, and Slices on Screen
10. Chapter Ten - From Mafia to Meme
11. Chapter Eleven - Detroit Style, Deep Dish, and the Crust Wars
12. Chapter Twelve - The Pizza Multiverse
13. Chapter Thirteen - Artisan Apocalypse
14. Chapter Fourteen - Papa John’s Meltdown
15. Chapter Fifteen - The Slice Heard Round the World
16. Chapter Sixteen - Crustal Revelation

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE The Sacred Origins FLATBREAD, FIRE, AND Naples Long before pizza was a delivery item, a meme, or a reason for a family to stop talking at dinner, it was sacred. It was primal. It was poor-people alchemy—flour, water, fire, and survival. We have to go back—way back. To the earliest civilizations: Egypt, Persia, Greece—cultures who didn’t call it pizza, but who damn sure paved the dough. Flatbreads cooked on hot stones, smeared with oils, herbs, maybe dates or honey. These weren’t meals. They were rituals. Portable, edible ceremony. Soldiers ate them before battle. Priests used them to commune with gods. Farmers broke them like sacrament. But it wasn’t pizza yet. That came later,...