The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food is Transforming the American City.

• Author: Smith, Solomon K.

Lemon, Robert. The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food is Transforming the American City. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2019.

Robert Lemons new book The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food is Transforming the American City represents the final product of two major projects. First, his dissertation, which traced how food practices both activated and altered the built environment within urban areas by investigating how the social practices of taco trucks morphed the cultural contours of three cities: Oakland (CA), Sacramento (CA), and Columbus (OH). While immersing himself into these communities, Lemon turned his interviews with local food truck owners and activists into two documentaries, Transfusion (2014) and ?Tacos or Tacos? (2011). Both played at several film festivals and were considered for awards. Although it just came out, The Taco Truck has already won the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize from the American Association of Geographers.

The Taco Truck begins with a brief history of Mexican street food and taco trucks. Crucial to this discussion is a...