Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)

Eating history is a collection of 30 vignettes covering key points in the evolution of American food. Each story also includes a brief "where are they now" postscript. Many of the "change artists" became rich and had companies that outlasted them, while some did not.
Early advancements in milling helped transform flour production from a purely local operation to something that could be handled in a centralized location. The Erie canal helped usher in improved transportation. This further consolidated milling. Technology for preserving and canning food also improved. By the time of the civil war canned food was one of the primary rations. This also led to a more general homogenization of American cuisine. Interestingly, the south earlier had a very diverse cuisine due in part to slavery. The slaves were given plots of land to grow crops to supplant their rations. They also did a lot of the cooking for their masters. This led to them bringing some flavors from their homeland.
Innovations like the reaper, fertilizer and genetic engineering helped encourage large scale industrial farms. On the other hand, muckrakers like Upton Sinclair and organic advocates like Rodale pushed back on food industrialization. Cook books and cooking shows have become very popular, spawning "celebrity chefs". Today there is also a great deal of consolidation in the food production world.
The thirty points do a great job of covering food history. There are probably many other key figures and events that could be included, but these are sufficient to paint a good picture of where we are now.