New Book Publication by ISAW Assistant Professor Claire Bubb

Claire Bubb, Assistant Professor of Classical Literature and Science at ISAW, recently published her new book, How to Eat: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers (Princeton, 2025).

From the book overview: "Today, we’re stuffed with dietary recommendations from every direction. Social media, advertising, food packaging, diet books, doctors—all have advice on what, how much, and when to eat. This would have been no surprise to ancient Greeks and Romans. Their doctors were intensely interested in food, offered highly prescriptive dietary advice, and developed detailed systems to categorize foods and their health effects. How to Eat is a delectable anthology of Greco-Roman writings on how to eat, exercise, sleep, bathe, and manage your sex life for optimal health. It also gathers ancient opinions on specific foods of all sorts, from how to deploy onions to cure baldness and cabbage to get sober to whether lentils are healthy and why arugula increases your sex drive."

Claire's research focuses on Greco-Roman medicine and the biological sciences, with publications including Dissection in Classical Antiquity: A Social and Medical History (Cambridge, 2022) and Medicine and the Law under the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2023; w/ M. Peachin). How to Eat is the first major output of her current research focus on theories of diet, digestion, and food in Greek and Roman medical, philosophical, and cultural thought.

Learn more about the book, and if you are interested in purchasing it, you can do so here and receive a 30% discount using code BUBB30 at checkout.