| |||||
Books: CookBooks: Bread Making
The Time Traveler's Wifeby Audrey Niffenegger List Price: $14.00 Available from Amazon $8.40 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly This highly original first novel won the largest advance San Francisco-based MacAdam/Cage had ever paid, and it was money well spent. Niffenegger has written a soaring love story illuminated by dozens of finely observed details and scenes, and one that skates nimbly around a huge conundrum at the heart of the book: Henry De Tamble, a rather dashing librarian at the famous Newberry Library in Chicago, finds himself unavoidably whisked around in time. He disappears from a scene in, say, 1998 to find himself suddenly, usually without his clothes, which mysteriously disappear in transit, at an entirely different place 10 years earlier-or later. During one of these migrations, he drops in on beautiful teenage Clare Abshire, an heiress in a large house on the nearby Michigan peninsula, and a lifelong passion is born. The problem is that while Henry's age darts back and forth according to his location in time, Clare's moves forward in the normal manner, so the pair are often out of sync. But such is the author's tenderness with the characters, and the determinedly ungimmicky way in which she writes of their predicament (only once do they make use of Henry's foreknowledge of events to make money, and then it seems to Clare like cheating) that the book is much more love story than fantasy. It also has a splendidly drawn cast, from Henry's violinist father, ruined by the loss of his wife in an accident from which Henry time-traveled as a child, to Clare's odd family and a multitude of Chicago bohemian friends. The couple's daughter, Alba, inherits her father's strange abilities, but this is again handled with a light touch; there's no Disney cuteness here. Henry's foreordained end is agonizing, but Niffenegger has another card up her sleeve, and plays it with poignant grace. It is a fair tribute to her skill and sensibility to say that the book leaves a reader with an impression of life's riches and strangeness rather than of easy thrills. Copyright 2003 Reed business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From AudioFile Although the title suggests that this is science fiction, Niffenegger's charming, emotionally charged novel is much more a love story. Told alternately from the viewpoints of time traveler Henry and his wife, Clare, it's highly enjoyable on audio. Readers Christopher Burns and Maggi-Meg Reed blend their respective chapters seamlessly. Each reader characterizes all roles within a chapter, and the depictions mesh beautifully. Both narrators characterize Korean friend Kimmy in a charmingly amusing voice and lend a light mood to the couple's daughter, Alba. Burns portrays the emotional chaos of Henry's life so genuinely as to cast the listener directly into his pain and joy. The abridged recording leaves one longing for more. J.J.B. 2004 Audie Award Finalist © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition. |
What to Eatby Marion Nestle List Price: $30.00 Available from Amazon $18.90 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly According to nutritionist Nestle (Food Politics), the increasing confusion among the general public about what to eat comes from two sources: experts who fail to create a holistic view by isolating food components and health issues, and a food industry that markets items on the basis of profits alone. She suggests that, often, research findings are deliberately obscure to placate special interests. Nestle says that simple, common-sense guidelines available decades ago still hold true: consume fewer calories, exercise more, eat more fruits and vegetables and, for today's consumers, less junk food. The key to eating well, Nestle advises, is to learn to navigate through the aisles (and thousands of items) in large supermarkets. To that end, she gives readers a virtual tour, highlighting the main concerns of each food group, including baby, health and prepared foods, and supplements. Nestle's prose is informative and entertaining; she takes on the role of detective, searching for clues to the puzzle of healthy and satisfying nutrition. Her intelligent and reassuring approach will likely make readers venture more confidently through the jungle of today's super-sized stores. (May) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Nutritionist Nestle's newest volume aims to help the American consumer determine what best to eat to improve or to maintain good health. Pursuing what she hopes is a unique and beneficial approach, she surveys a supermarket on a food-by-food basis, noting for each category what nutritional benefits are claimed and what really are the advantages and dangers in consuming any grocery offering. She documents how food industry concerns have perverted nutritional and origin labeling, dismayed that economics has once more trumped open information. She assesses the roles of trans-fats in processed food, methylmercury in fish, calcium in dairy products, salmonella in fresh eggs, sugar in cereals, and genetic modification. Nestle is particularly concerned that consumers understand all the implications, good and bad, of the perennially contentious "organic" label. Although the honest, prudent scientist in Nestle precludes her providing glib prescriptions or half-true advice on eating, she does present very helpful shopping guidelines for consumers determined to be vigilant about their food. Mark Knoblauch Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbellyby Anthony Bourdain List Price: $14.00 Available from Amazon $10.78 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page Product Review Most diners believe that their sublime sliver of seared foie gras, topped with an ethereal buckwheat blini and a drizzle of piquant huckleberry sauce, was created by a culinary artist of the highest order, a sensitive, highly refined executive chef. The truth is more brutal. More likely, writes Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, that elegant three-star concoction is the collaborative effort of a team of "wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts, and psychopaths," in all likelihood pierced or tattooed and incapable of uttering a sentence without an expletive or a foreign phrase. Such is the muscular view of the culinary trenches from one who's been groveling in them, with obvious sadomasochistic pleasure, for more than 20 years. CIA-trained Bourdain, currently the executive chef of the celebrated Les Halles, wrote two culinary mysteries before his first (and infamous) New Yorker essay launched this frank confessional about the lusty and larcenous real lives of cooks and restaurateurs. He is obscenely eloquent, unapologetically opinionated, and a damn fine storyteller--a Jack Kerouac of the kitchen. Those without the stomach for this kind of joyride should note his opening caveat: "There will be horror stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably shouldn't order fish on a Monday, why those who favor well-done get the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection. But I'm simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I've seen it." --Sumi Hahn From Publishers Weekly Chef at New York's Les Halles and author of Bone in the Throat, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business. His fast-lane personality and glee in recounting sophomoric kitchen pranks might be unbearable were it not for two things: Bourdain is as unsparingly acerbic with himself as he is with others, and he exhibits a sincere and profound love of good food. The latter was born on a family trip to France when young Bourdain tasted his first oyster, and his love has only grown since. He has attended culinary school, fallen prey to a drug habit and even established a restaurant in Tokyo, discovering along the way that the crazy, dirty, sometimes frightening world of the restaurant kitchen sustains him. Bourdain is no presentable TV version of a chef; he talks tough and dirty. His advice to aspiring chefs: "Show up at work on time six months in a row and we'll talk about red curry paste and lemon grass. Until then, I have four words for you: 'Shut the fuck up.' " He disdains vegetarians, warns against ordering food well done and cautions that restaurant brunches are a crapshoot. Gossipy chapters discuss the many restaurants where Bourdain has worked, while a single chapter on how to cook like a professional at home exhorts readers to buy a few simple gadgets, such as a metal ring for tall food. Most of the book, however, deals with Bourdain's own maturation as a chef, and the culmination, a litany describing the many scars and oddities that he has developed on his hands, is surprisingly beautiful. He'd probably hate to hear it, but Bourdain has a tender side, and when it peeks through his rough exterior and the wall of four-letter words he constructs, it elevates this book to something more than blustery memoir. (May) Copyright 2000 Reed business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. |
The Glass Castle: A Memoir (Alex Awards (Awards))by Jeannette Walls List Price: $25.00 Available from Amazon $15.75 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page Product Review Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover. --Brangien Davis From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Freelance writer Walls doesn't pull her punches. She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a Dumpster." Walls's parents—just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book—were a matched pair of eccentrics, and raising four children didn't conventionalize either of them. Her father was a self-taught man, a would-be inventor who could stay longer at a poker table than at most jobs and had "a little bit of a drinking situation," as her mother put it. With a fantastic storytelling knack, Walls describes her artist mom's great gift for rationalizing. Apartment walls so thin they heard all their neighbors? What a bonus—they'd "pick up a little Spanish without even studying." Why feed their pets? They'd be helping them "by not allowing them to become dependent." While Walls's father's version of Christmas presents—walking each child into the Arizona desert at night and letting each one claim a star—was delightful, he wasn't so dear when he stole the kids' hard-earned savings to go on a bender. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show. Buck-toothed Jeannette even tried making her own braces when she heard what orthodontia cost. One by one, each child escaped to New York City. Still, it wasn't long before their parents appeared on their doorsteps. "Why not?" Mom said. "Being homeless is an adventure." Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
The Low GI Diet Cookbook: 100 Simple, Delicious Smart-Carb Recipes-The Proven Way to Lose Weight and Eat for Lifelong Health (New Glucose...by Jennie Brand-Miller, Kaye Foster-Powell, and Joanna McMillan-Price List Price: $19.95 Available from Amazon $12.97 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Forget about low fat, low cal and low carb, say the authors, join the New Glucose Revolution, a weight-loss plan based on the "glycemic index," (GI for short) which ranks foods by their affect on blood-sugar levels. Low GI cuisine produces "only gentle rises in your blood glucose and insulin levels," which supposedly keeps hunger down and energy up. The authors don't produce any studies to back up these claims, but the diet seems reasonable, as it's high in fiber, low in fat and encourages exercise. But the true test of any cookbook is in the kitchen, and based on this criterion, the book is only a qualified success. The recipes are admittedly superior: they're clearly written, with accurate preparation times and scrupulous nutritional information. The wide spectrum of dishes (chickpea burgers, meat and fish entrees, French toast) will appeal to many tastes, and the food is tasty. The problem is a low-GI diet just doesn't seem easy to follow. The authors do include a section on what to keep in your kitchen, as well as a brief passage about food labeling, but it's difficult to imagine how anyone with a job will have time to keep track of all this information. And, although the authors assert that there are "no special foods to buy," it seems unlikely that you'll find quinoa or chermoula at the Piggly-Wiggly. Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Book Description Based on the healthy low-GI eating principles established in The Low GI Diet Revolution, New York Times bestselling authors Jennie Brand-Miller and Kaye Foster-Powell, along with Joanna McMillan-Price, offer readers a companion cookbook packed with 100 delicious recipes that incorporate the top 100 low-GI foods. The New Glucose Revolution Cookbook covers everything from breakfast, snacks, and juices to dinner, dessert, and smoothies and features a special section on cooking essentials. Complete with important information on food shopping the low-GI way, kids meals, menu plans to suit our busy lifestyles, and gorgeous four-color photographs throughout, The New Glucose Revolution Cookbook makes sticking to a low-GI diet easy and enjoyable. |
The Making of the Atomic Bombby Richard Rhodes List Price: $20.00 Available from Amazon $12.60 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page Product Review If the first 270 pages of this book had been published separately, they would have made up a lively, insightful, beautifully written history of theoretical physics and the men and women who plumbed the mysteries of the atom. Along with the following 600 pages, they become a sweeping epic, filled with terror and pity, of the ultimate scientific quest: the development of the ultimate weapon. Rhodes is a peerless explainer of difficult concepts; he is even better at chronicling the personalities who made the discoveries that led to the Bomb. Niels Bohr dominates the first half of the book as J. Robert Oppenheimer does the second; both men were gifted philosophers of science as well as brilliant physicists. The central irony of this book, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, is that the greatest minds of the century contributed to the greatest destructive force in history. From Publishers Weekly The breadth and scope of this gripping narrative is almost as impressive as the story itself. Rhodes ( Looking for America describes the theoretical origins of the bomb, the lab experiments, the building of the prototype, the test at Alamagordo, the training of the B-29 crews assigned to deliver the first two combat bombs and the missions themselves. There's much more. Rhodes, gifted with sharp psychological insight and a novelist's ability to convey character, reveals the personalities and emotional dynamics among Niels Bohr, Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Ernest Lawrence, Robert Oppenheimer, General Leslie Groves, Colonel Paul Tibbets and others responsible for conceiving, engineering, testing and ultimately dropping the apocalyptic devices on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition he describes the struggle in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to make the first bomb, as well as the political and military events that led inexorably to the destruction of the Japanese cities. This is the most comprehensive and authoritative book on the subject to date. Illustrations. BOMC alternate. Copyright 1987 Reed business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. |
I Am My Mother's Daughter: Making Peace With Mom—before It's Too Lateby Iris Krasnow List Price: $25.00 Available from Amazon $15.75 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly At 50, American University communications professor Krasnow (Surrendering to Marriage) reconciled with her difficult mother, a Holocaust survivor and former saleswoman. Here she gathers insights from other adult women with diverse backgrounds and experiences but similar life wisdom: "Ditching old baggage and learning to love our mothers must come before we learn to love, and know, ourselves." A private investigator becomes caretaker to her highly competent mother, a former nurse, and discovers that the Superwoman is merely human; a Trinidadian immigrant and victim of spousal abuse accepts her lawyer daughter's lesbianism and gains her respect. A therapist and survivor of eating disorders shares a marital problem with her "historically non-empathetic" mother and is gratified by her response; a social services professional pushing 70 learns to cope with the 96-year-old family matriarch who still treats her like a child. celebrities get to vent, too: singer Chynna Phillips reconnects with her neglectful rock star mother, Michelle, of the Mamas and the Papas, as they bond over Chynna's children and a passion for music. Although it doesn't pack the punch that Nancy Friday's revolutionary My Mother/My Self did in its day, Krasnow's worthy effort will resonate with introspective baby boomers.(May) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Book Description Inspiration and advice for adult daughters on making peace with Mom while there's still time--from the best-selling author of Surrendering to Marriage Iris Krasnow--mother, daughter, and best-selling Journalist--tackles the toughest relationship in the lives of many grown women: the mother-daughter bond. With women's life expectancy inching up past eighty, you may be embroiled with your mother well past the time your own hair turns white. The good news: Living longer means more time to make peace--and this book shows you how. Drawing on her own experience with her colorful eighty-four-year-old mother and the collective wisdom of more than one hundred other adult daughters, Krasnow offers a fresh perspective on how to overcome the anger, guilt, and resentment that can destroy a family. The time to repair the bond is now, she reminds us: You can't kiss and make up at her funeral. The key is to let go of the fantasy mom and embrace the flesh-and-blood woman, with all her flaws.
|
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchenby Harold McGee List Price: $40.00 Available from Amazon $25.20 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page Product Review A classic tome of gastronomic science and lore, On Food and Cooking delivers an erudite discussion of table ingredients and their interactions with our bodies. Following the historical, literary, scientific and practical treatment of foodstuffs from dairy to meat to vegetables, McGee explains the nature of digestion and hunger before tackling basic ingredient components, cooking methods and utensils. He explains what happens when food spoils, why eggs are so nutritious and how alcohol makes us drunk. As fascinating as it is comprehensive, this is as practical, interesting and necessary for the cook as for the scholar. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Before antioxidants, extra-virgin olive oil and supermarket sushi commanded public obsession, the first edition of this book swept readers and cooks into the everyday magic of the kitchen: it became an overnight classic. Now, 20 years later, McGee has taken his slightly outdated volume and turned it into a stunning masterpiece that combines science, linguistics, history, poetry and, of course, gastronomy. He dances from the spicy flavor of Hawaiian seaweed to the scientific method of creating no-stir peanut butter, quoting Chinese poet Shu Xi and biblical proverbs along the way. McGee's conversational style—rich with exclamation points and everyday examples—allows him to explain complex chemical reactions, like caramelization, without dumbing them down. His book will also be hailed as groundbreaking in its breakdown of taste and flavor. Though several cookbooks have begun to answer the questions of why certain foods go well together, McGee draws on recent agricultural research, neuroscience Reviews and chemical publications to chart the different flavor chemicals in herbs and spices, fruits and vegetables. Odd synergies appear, like the creation of fruity esters in dry-cured ham—the same that occur naturally in melons! McGee also corrects the European bias of the first edition, moving beyond the Mediterranean to discuss the foods of Asia and Mexico. Almost every single page of this edition has been rewritten, but the book retains the same light touch as the original. McGee has successfully revised the bible of food science—and produced a fascinating, charming text. Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
Additional Pages: 1 2 3
Other Shops:
Books
Resources
Most Watched Book Auctions
Bread Making at Sduf
Book Review Directory
Reviewed Authors
Reviewed Titles
Review List
Site Map
