That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia—including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove—was sold at auction for over $1 million to a guy who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, Ukrainian revolutionaries raided the palace of their ousted president and found a zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant modeled after a Spanish galleon. Unlikely as it might seem, there is a thread connecting these events, and Rachel Maddow follows it to its crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry. With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia’s rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia’s rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the West’s most important alliances, and the United States. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, “like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can’t really blame the lion. It’s in her nature.” Blowout is a call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest businesses on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world’s most destructive industry and its enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, “Democracy either wins this one or disappears.”

    In this memoir, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age. Growing up in the Bronx and Nigeria (where he was sent by his mother to "learn respect"), food was Onwuachi's great love. He launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars he made selling candy on the subway, and trained in the kitchens of some of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country. But the road to success is riddled with potholes. As a young chef, Onwuachi was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the world of fine dining can be for people of color, and his first restaurant, the culmination of years of planning, shuttered just months after opening. -Notes from a Young Black Chef is one man's pursuit of his passions, despite the odds.

    It takes the core information about tea but presents it in a highly original and entertaining way. It uses infographics and illustrations to convey facts and figures as well as other informative content.With five parts, the book starts off with a celebration of tea-drinking around the world: from drinking masala chai in tea shacks in India or from a samovar in Russia, to the dramatic pouring of Moroccan mint tea and the brewing of a salty butter tea in Tibet.Part two is an illustrated timeline that takes you through the history of tea in a humorous and engaging way.Part three - From Plant to Pot - explains in a simple but informative way the origins of different teas, where they come from and how they are processed. Take a visual journey, with the tea leaf, and see what happens during the processing business as well as learning about the different types of tea and what each needs to bring out its very best in terms of taste. It's here, too, that we meet the people behind the tea estates that teapigs deal with.Part four explains everything you ever wanted to know about drinking tea. Should you slurp or sip your tea? Follow in the steps of a tea taster and learn how to taste like a pro. Is a cup or a bowl best for drinking tea? The book takes a look at all kinds of drinking vessels from across the globe. To dunk or not to dunk - that is the question? Teapigs subscribers give their top 10 biscuits to dip in a cup of tea, does your favourite biscuit feature?And how can tea influence your mood? The fun but informative mood-o-meter shows you how to pick the right tea to cheer you up or calm you down. Plus, discover a whole tea chest of health-related benefits.The last part of the book is packed with 30 or so recipes, offering inspiration for using tea in cooking or partnering recipes with the best teas.

    But it is far more than that. In this book, social historian and TV presenter Ruth Goodman tells the story of how the development of the coal-fired domestic range fundamentally changed not just our domestic comforts, but our world. The revolution began as far back as the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when London began the switch from wood to coal as its domestic fuel – a full 200 years before any other city. It would be this domestic demand for more coal that would lead to the expansion of mining, engineering, construction and industry: the Domestic Revolution kick-started, pushed and fuelled the Industrial Revolution.There were other radical shifts. Coal cooking was to change not just how we cooked but what we cooked (causing major swings in diet), how we washed (first our laundry and then our bodies) and how we decorated (spurring the wallpaper industry). It also defined the nature of women’s and men’s working lives, pushing women more firmly into the domestic sphere. It transformed our landscape and environment (by the time of Elizabeth’s death in 1603, London’s air was as polluted as that of modern Beijing). Even tea drinking can be brought back to coal in the home, with all its ramifications for the shape of the empire and modern world economics.Taken together, these shifts in our day-to-day practices started something big, something unprecedented, something that was exported across the globe and helped create the world we live in today.

    This history reaches far back to the earliest civilisation in the Americas, and it was the Olmecs not the Aztecs who can be rightly named as the inventors of chocolate. Told with flair and wit, this history of cacoa looks at its ancient Mexican roots, questioning how it became the food of the gods, its ritual significance, and how it was used as a currency in trade among the Olmec. Piecing together a range of archaeological, documentary and pictorial evidence, Sophie and Michael Coe discuss the Theobrama cacoa tree, the chemical properties of cacao and its early domestication and use. The story of chocolate continues under the Aztecs and their first encounters with the Europeans. The authors trace the transformation and renaming of cacao as it made its way to the chocoholics of Europe - the white-skinned perfumed, bewigged, overdressed royalty and nobility'. Finally, Coe and Coe discuss its years of competititon with tea and coffee as the preferred hot beverage, its links with the Church, and its surrender to the industrialisation of the 19th century which withdrew the mystique of this luscious mouth-watering treat and turned it into an everyday, mass-produced, highly calorific product.

    He then jets forward to the nineteenth century, where systems we can easily recognize as modern bureaucracies come into being. In some areas of life—like with the modern postal systems of Germany and France—these bureaucracies have brought tremendous efficiencies to modern life. But Graeber argues that there is a much darker side to modern bureaucracy that is rarely ever discussed. Indeed, in our own “utopia of rules,” freedom and technological innovation are often the casualties of systems that we only faintly understand.Provocative and timely, the book is a powerful look and history of bureaucracy over the ages and its power in shaping the world of ideas.

    But what do we really know about Burma and its history? And what can Burma's past tell us about the present and even its future?In "The River of Lost Footsteps," Thant Myint-U tells the story of modern Burma, in part through a telling of his own family's history, in an interwoven narrative that is by turns lyrical, dramatic, and appalling. His maternal grandfather, U Thant, rose from being the schoolmaster of a small town in the Irrawaddy Delta to become the UN secretary-general in the 1960s. And on his father's side, the author is descended from a long line of courtiers who served at Burma's Court of Ava for nearly two centuries. Through their stories and others, he portrays Burma's rise and decline in the modern world, from the time of Portuguese pirates and renegade Mughal princes through the decades of British colonialism, the devastation of World War II, and a sixty-year civil war that continues today and is the longest-running war anywhere in the world."The River of Lost Footsteps" is a work both personal and global, a distinctive contribution that makes Burma accessible and enthralling. Thant Myint-U, educated at Harvard and Cambridge, has served on three United Nations peacekeeping operations, in Cambodia and in the former Yugoslavia, and was more recently the head of policy planning in the UN's Department of Political Affairs. He lives in New York City.

    Arnade's raw, deeply reported accounts cut through today's clickbait media headlines and indict the elitists who misunderstood poverty and addiction in America for decades.After abandoning his Wall Street career, Arnade decided to document poverty and addiction in the Bronx. He began interviewing, photographing, and becoming close friends with homeless addicts, and spent hours in drug dens and McDonald's. Then he started driving across America to see how the rest of the country compared. He found the same types of stories everywhere, across lines of race, ethnicity, religion, and geography.The people he got to know, from Alabama and California to Maine and Nevada, gave Arnade a new respect for the dignity and resilience of what he calls America's Back Row--those who lack the credentials and advantages of the so-called meritocratic upper class. The strivers in the Front Row, with their advanced degrees and upward mobility, see the Back Row's values as worthless. They scorn anyone who stays in a dying town or city as foolish, and mock anyone who clings to religion or tradition as naive.As Takeesha, a woman in the Bronx, told Arnade, she wants to be seen she sees herself: "a prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of God." This book is his attempt to help the rest of us truly see, hear, and respect millions of people who've been left behind.

    With the stunning popularity of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Americans are embracing the class politics of socialism. But what, exactly, is socialism? And what would a socialist system in America look like? The editor of Jacobin magazine, Sunkara shows that socialism, though often seen primarily as an economic system, in fact offers the means to fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to healthcare, education, and housing, and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities. A primer on socialism for the 21st century, this is a book for anyone seeking an end to the vast inequities of our age.

    So, in this groundbreaking cookbook, his first in five years, he tackles all four. Broken down into seven techniques of one-pot cooking--including braising, wokking, sauteing, high-temperature cooking, roasting, tossing, and soups--SIMPLY MING ONE-POT MEALS offers 80 recipes with Ming's well-known East-West approach. Every recipe minds its fat intakes and allergens (keeping it healthful); every dish costs roughly $20 for four servings (keeping it economical); and, for most of the recipes, you'll only have to use one vessel in which to cook (keeping it simple).Toss a Miso-Shallot Grilled Chicken Frisee Salad, braise Pork Belly and Pineapple, wok up some Black Bean Scallops and Zucchini, flash-fry Turkey Scallopini with a warm Mango-Cranberry Vinaigrette, roast a Moroccan Lamb Shoulder with Couscous, saute some Gingered Beef and Leeks, and stew a Three-Bean Chili. Yes, you can make Sweet Potato Raviolis in Thai Basil Brown Butter, Potato-Crusted Halibut with a Shaved Fennel Salad, and Asian Sloppy Joes all in one pot! Every dish is accompanied with a beverage suggestion and a full-color photograph to make your preparation even easier.Whether you're aiming to feed a family of four on a weeknight, entertaining a dinner party on a weekend, or cooking for one or two for the week ahead, you'll find inspiration in these quick and simple yet utterly delicious--one-pot meals.--front flap

    On the show, one explosive, charismatic Head Chef oversees 16 chefs as they battle it out to win a job as Head Chef of top restaurant with a total prize value of $250,000. In each episode the chefs are put to the test in a skill's-based challenge, and must follow it up by completing dinner service at the exclusive Hell's Kitchen restaurant set in Los Angeles. Now, in their first ever cookbook, readers will learn how to recreate over one hundred of the contestant's delectable, restaurant-worthy dishes in their own home and will be given access to the recipes, menus, and behind-the-scenes secrets that they've been craving!

    But this overwhelmingly white women's movement did not win the vote for most black women. Securing their rights required a movement of their own.In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women's political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of black women—Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more—who were the vanguard of women's rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.

    Not only that, authors Umansky and Shih take this magical ingredient to the next level, using it to rapidly age charcuterie, cheese, and other ferments, revolutionizing the creation of fermented foods and their flavor profiles for both chefs and home cooks. Koji Alchemy guides readers through the history, versatility, and a multitude of applications. Readers will learn how to grow koji, including information on equipment and setting up your kitchen, as well as detailed concepts and processes for making amino sauces and pastes, alcohol and vinegar, and using it for flavor enhancement with dairy, eggs, vegetables, and baking. With the help of friends offering a depth and breadth of tips and expertise, Koji Alchemy is a comprehensive look at modern koji use around the world.

    of the Americas set in motion a transformation of food cultures around the world, this look at the five-hundred-year revolution in food history explains how Europeans, Americans, and Asians came to eat what they eat today.

    Big Business waged an all-out campaign to win the allegiance of American housewives, but most women were suspicious of the new foods—and the make-believe cooking they entailed. With sharp insight and good humor, Laura Shapiro shows how the ensuing battle helped shape the way we eat today, and how the clash in the kitchen reverberated elsewhere in the house as women struggled with marriage, work, and domesticity. This unconventional history overturns our notions about the ’50s and offers new thinking on some of its fascinating figures, including Poppy Cannon, Shirley Jackson, Julia Child, and Betty Friedan.