Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement


Sarah Erdreich - 2013
    At the start of his second term, it is time for Barack Obama, forty years after Roe v. Wade, to finally help lead us to demystify abortion. One-third of all American women will have an abortion by the time they are 45, and most of those women are already mothers. Yet, the topic remains taboo. In this provocative book on the heels of the Planned Parenthood controversy, Sarah Erdreich presents the antidote to the usual abortion debates.Inextricably connected to issues of autonomy, privacy, and sexuality, the abortion debate remains home base for the culture wars in America. Yet, there is more common ground than meets the eye in favor of choice. Generation Roe delves into phenomena such as "abortion-recovery counseling," "crisis pregnancy centers," and the infamous anti-choice "black children are an endangered species" billboards. It tells the stories of those who risk their lives to pursue careers in this stigmatized field. And it outlines the outrageous legislative battles that are being waged against abortion rights all over the country. With an inspiring spirit and a forward-looking approach, Erdreich holds abortion up, unabashedly, as a moral and fundamental human right.

More Mexican Everyday: Simple, Seasonal, Celebratory


Rick Bayless - 2015
    Now, Rick returns with an all-new collection of uniquely flavorful recipes, each one the product of his evolution as a chef and champion of local, seasonal ingredients.More Mexican Everyday teaches home cooks how to build tasty meals with a few ingredients in a short amount of time. Cooking Mexican couldn’t be easier, or more delicious. Rick generously reveals the secrets of his dishes—the salsas and seasonings, mojos and adobos he employs again and again to impart soul-satisfying flavor. He explains fully the classic techniques that create so many much-beloved Mexican meals, from tacos and enchiladas to pozole and mole. Home cooks under his guidance will be led confidently to making these their go-to recipes night after night."Everyday" Mexican also means simplicity, so Rick dedicates individual chapters to illustrate skillful use of the slow cooker and the rice cooker. Also included are a special variation of the classic chicken-and-rice pairing, Arroz con Pollo, with an herby green seasoning, and an addictive roasted tomatillo salsa that’s flavored with the same red chile seasoning brushed on his lush Grilled Red-Chile Ribs.Rick loves to highlight the use of seasonal, diverse vegetables. The heart of this cookbook is devoted to modern creations that range from a Jícama-Beet Salad inspired by Mexico’s classic Christmas Eve salad to a sweet-and-tangy butternut braise. Rick's flexible imagination also transforms breakfast into a meal for any hour. His Open-Face Red Chile–Chard Omelet is as great for Wednesday night dinner as it is for Sunday brunch. Not to be forgotten is Rick's array of show-stopping desserts, among them Mexican Chocolate–Pumpkin Seed Cake and Fresh Fruit with 24-Hour Cajeta and Bitter Chocolate. In all his recipes, Rick carefully guides you through every step, suggesting ways to invent, adapt, and simplify without sacrificing flavor.More Mexican Everyday invites you into Rick's creative kitchen to enliven the way you cook and eat with friends and family.

The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown


Paul Taylor - 2014
    Huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our technology use.Today's Millennials—well-educated, tech savvy, underemployed twenty-somethings—are at risk of becoming the first generation in American history to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Meantime, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every single day, most of them not as well prepared financially as they'd hoped. This graying of our population has helped polarize our politics, put stresses on our social safety net, and presented our elected leaders with a daunting challenge: How to keep faith with the old without bankrupting the young and starving the future.Every aspect of our demography is being fundamentally transformed. By mid-century, the population of the United States will be majority non-white and our median age will edge above 40—both unprecedented milestones. But other rapidly-aging economic powers like China, Germany, and Japan will have populations that are much older. With our heavy immigration flows, the US is poised to remain relatively young. If we can get our spending priorities and generational equities in order, we can keep our economy second to none. But doing so means we have to rebalance the social compact that binds young and old. In tomorrow's world, yesterday's math will not add up.Drawing on Pew Research Center's extensive archive of public opinion surveys and demographic data, The Next America is a rich portrait of where we are as a nation and where we're headed—toward a future marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century.

The Butcher's Guide to Well-Raised Meat: How to Buy, Cut, and Cook Great Beef, Lamb, Pork, Poultry, and More


Joshua Applestone - 2011
    The butcher has reemerged in American culture as an essential guide in avoiding the evils of industrial meat—which not only tastes bad, but is also bad for one’s health and for the environment. Joshua and Jessica Applestone, a former vegan and vegetarian, are trailblazers in this arena. They run Fleisher’s, an old-school butcher shop with a modern-day mission—sourcing and selling only grass-fed and organic meat. The Applestones’ return to the nearly lost tradition of the buying and nose-to-tail carving of whole animals—all humanely raised close to their shop in New York’s Hudson Valley—has helped to make them rising stars in the food world.             The Butcher’s Guide to Well-Raised Meat is a compendium of their firsthand knowledge. This unique book—a guide, memoir, manifesto, and reference in one—shares everything one needs to know about well-raised meat, including why pastured meats are so much better than conventional ones and how to perfectly butcher and cook them at home. Readers will learn which cut of steak to look for as an alternative to the popular hanger (of which each steer has only one), how to host a driveway pig roast, and even how to break down an entire lamb (or just butterfly the shoulder)—all with accompanying step-by-step photographs. Differences among breeds and ideal cooking methods for various cuts and offal are covered, and the Applestones’ decoding of misleading industry terminology and practices will help consumers make smarter, healthier purchases that can also help change what’s wrong with meat in America today.             Complete with color and black-and-white photographs, illustrations, and more than a dozen recipes, The Butcher’s Guide to Well-Raised Meat is the definitive guide to eating great meat—responsibly.

Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World's Most Versatile Ingredient


Michael Ruhlman - 2014
    For culinary visionary Michael Ruhlman, the question is not whether the chicken or the egg came first, it's how anything could be accomplished in the kitchen without the magic of the common egg. He starts with perfect poached and scrambled eggs and builds up to brioche and Italian meringue. Along the way readers learn to make their own mayonnaise, pasta, custards, quiches, cakes, and other preparations that rely fundamentally on the hidden powers of the egg. A unique framework for the book is provided in Ruhlman's egg flowchart, which starts with the whole egg at the top and branches out to describe its many uses and preparations -- boiled, pressure-cooked, poached, fried, coddled, separated, worked into batters and doughs, and more. A removable illustrated flowchart is included with this book. Nearly 100 recipes are grouped by technique and range from simple (Egg Salad with Tarragon and Chives) to sophisticated (nougat). Dozens of step-by-step photographs guide the home cook through this remarkable culinary journey.

Preserving Italy: Canning, Curing, Infusing, and Bottling Italian Flavors and Traditions


Domenica Marchetti - 2016
    There, abundant produce and other Mediterranean ingredients lend themselves particularly well to canning, bottling, and other preserving methods. Think of marinated artichokes in olive oil, classic giardiniera, or, of course, the late-summer tradition of putting up tomato sauce. But in this book we get so much more, from Marchetti’s in-person travels across the regions of Italy as well as the recipes handed down through her family: sweet and sour peppers, Marsala-spiked apricot jam, lemon-infused olive oil, and her grandmother’s amarene, sour cherries preserved in alcohol. Beyond canning and pickling, the book also includes recipes for making cheese, curing meats, infusing liqueurs, and even a few confections, plus recipes for finished dishes so you can savor each treasured jar all year long.

History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History


Dana Lindaman - 2004
    The subject of widespread attention when it was first published in 2004—including a full front-page review in the Washington Post Book World and features on NPR’s Talk of the Nation and the History Channel—this book gives us a glimpse into classrooms across the globe, where opinions about the United States are first formed.Heralded as “timely and important” (History News Network) and “shocking and fascinating” (New York Times), History Lessons includes selections from Russia, France, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Canada, and others, covering such events as the American Revolution, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Iran hostage crisis, and the Korean War, providing an alternative history of the United States from the Viking explorers to the post–Cold War era.By juxtaposing starkly contrasting versions of the historical events we take for granted, History Lessons affords us a sometimes hilarious, often sobering look at what the world learns about America’s past.

"The Rest of Us": The Rise of America's Eastern European Jews


Stephen Birmingham - 1984
    These refugees from czarist Russia and the Polish shtetls who came to America to escape pogroms and persecution were considered barbaric, uneducated, and too steeped in the traditions of the “old country” to be accepted by the more refined and already well-established German-Jewish community. But the new arrivals were tough, passionate, and determined, and in no time they were moving up from the ghetto tenements of New York’s Lower East Side to make their marks and their fortunes across the country in a variety of fields, from media and popular music to fashion, motion pictures, and even organized crime.   Among the unforgettable personages author Stephen Birmingham profiles are radio pioneer David Sarnoff, makeup mogul Helena Rubinstein, Hollywood tycoons Samuel Goldwyn and Harry Cohn, Broadway composer Irving Berlin, and mobster Meyer Lansky. From the author of “Our Crowd”, comes this treasure trove of fascinating tales and unforgettable “rags-to-riches” success stories that celebrates the indomitable spirit of a unique community.

Chocolate: Sweet Science Dark Secrets of the World's Favorite Treat


Kay Frydenborg - 2015
    Readers who savored Chew on This and Food, Inc. and lovers of chocolate will relish this fascinating read.

Southern Cakes: Sweet and Irresistible Recipes for Everyday Celebrations


Nancie McDermott - 2007
    Here are 65 recipes for some of the most delicious ever. Jam cakes and jelly rolls; humble pear bread and peanut cake; whole chapters on both chocolate and coconut cakeseach moist and delicious forkful represents the spirit of the South. A Baking 101 section offers the cake basics, some finishing touches (that means frosting and lots of it!), and the how-to's of storing each lovely concoction so that the last slice tastes as fresh and delightful as the first.

The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook


Danny Bowien - 2015
    From the beginning, a spirit of resourcefulness and radical inventiveness has infused each and every dish at Mission Chinese Food. Now, hungry diners line up outside both the San Francisco and New York City locations, waiting hours for platters of Sizzling Cumin Lamb, Thrice-Cooked Bacon, Fiery Kung Pao Pastrami, and pungent Salt-Cod Fried Rice.The force behind the phenomenon, chef Danny Bowien is, at only thirty-three, the fastest-rising young chef in the United States. Born in Korea and adopted by parents in Oklahoma, he has a broad spectrum of influences. He’s a veteran of fine-dining kitchens, sushi bars, an international pesto competition, and a grocery-store burger stand. In 2013 Food & Wine named him one of the country’s Best New Chefs and the James Beard Foundation awarded him its illustrious Rising Star Chef Award. In 2011 Bon Appétit named Mission Chinese Food the second-best new restaurant in America, and in 2012 the New York Times hailed the Lower East Side outpost as the Best New Restaurant in New York City. The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook tracks the fascinating, meteoric rise of the restaurant and its chef. Each chapter in the story—from the restaurant’s early days, to an ill-fated trip to China, to the opening of the first Mission Chinese in New York—unfolds as a conversation between Danny and his collaborators, and is accompanied by detailed recipes for the addictive dishes that have earned the restaurant global praise. Mission Chinese’s legions of fans as well as home cooks of all levels will rethink what it means to cook Chinese food, while getting a look into the background and insights of one of the most creative young chefs today.

Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History


Sidney W. Mintz - 1985
    Traces the history of sugar production and consumption, examines its relationship with slavery, class ambitions, and industrialization, and describes sugar's impact on modern diet and eating habits.

Buttermilk Graffiti: A Chef’s Journey to Discover America’s New Melting-Pot Cuisine


Edward Lee - 2018
    In a nation of immigrants who bring their own culinary backgrounds to this country, what happens one or even two generations later? What does their cuisine become? It turns into a cuisine uniquely its own and one that Lee argues makes America the most interesting place to eat on earth. Lee illustrates this through his own life story of being a Korean immigrant and a New Yorker and now a Southerner. In Off the Menu, he shows how we each have a unique food memoir that is worthy of exploration. To Lee, recipes are narratives and a conduit to learn about a person, a place, or a point in time. He says that the best way to get to know someone is to eat the food they eat. Each chapter shares a personal tale of growth and self-discovery through the foods Lee eats and the foods of the people he interacts with—whether it’s the Korean budae jjigae of his father or the mustard beer cheese he learns to make from his wife’s German-American family. Each chapter is written in narrative form and punctuated with two recipes to highlight the story, including Green Tea Beignets, Cornbread Pancakes with Rhubarb Jam, and Butternut Squash Schnitzel. Each recipe tells a story, but when taken together, they form the arc of the narrative and contribute to the story we call the new American food.

Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People


Helen Zia - 2000
    It explores the junctures that shocked Asian Americans into motion and shaped a new consciousness, including the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, by two white autoworkers who believed he was Japanese; the apartheid-like working conditions of Filipinos in the Alaska canneries; the boycott of Korean American greengrocers in Brooklyn; the Los Angeles riots; and the casting of non-Asians in the Broadway musical Miss Saigon. The book also examines the rampant stereotypes of Asian Americans.Helen Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, was born in the 1950s when there were only 150,000 Chinese Americans in the entire country, and she writes as a personal witness to the dramatic changes involving Asian Americans.Written for both Asian Americans -- the fastest-growing population in the United States -- and non-Asians, Asian American Dreams argues that America can no longer afford to ignore these emergent, vital, and singular American people.

Perfect Pan Pizza: Detroit, Roman, Sicilian, Foccacia, and Grandma Pies to Make at Home


Peter Reinhart - 2019
    Starting with recipes for three master doughs that can be made with commercial yeast, as well as a brief intro to sourdough starters, Perfect Pan Pizza illustrates how to make several styles of pan pizza including Detroit-style "deep pan" pizza, focaccia and schiacciata, and Roman and Sicilian styles through step-by-step photographs. The pizzas include classic toppings like pepperoni and mushrooms, as well as an exciting variety of recipes like the sandwich-inspired Philly-style Roast Pork and Broccoli Rabe; Reuben pizza; Bacon and Egg with Tomato and Arugula Pizza; Blue Cheese, Balsamic Onion Marmalade, and Walnut Focaccia; and Rosemary Garlic Potato, Baby Kale, and Prosciutto Pizza Al Taglio. With unique recipes, plenty of informative FAQs for beginners, and a permissive and inspiring tone, this book will appeal to both experienced bread bakers and novice home pizza makers alike.