The Summer of Beer and Whiskey: How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America's Game


Edward Achorn - 2013
    Louis Cardinals. Yet the German-born beer garden proprietor would become one of the most important—and funniest—figures in the game's history.Von der Ahe picked up the team for one reason—to sell more beer. Then he helped gather a group of ragtag professional clubs together to create a maverick new league that would fight the haughty National League, reinventing big-league baseball to attract Americans of all classes. Sneered at as “The Beer and Whiskey Circuit” because it was backed by brewers, distillers, and saloon owners, their American Association brought Americans back to enjoying baseball by offering Sunday games, beer at the ballpark, and a dirt-cheap ticket price of 25 cents.The womanizing, egocentric, wildly generous Von der Ahe and his fellow owners filled their teams' rosters with drunks and renegades, and drew huge crowds of rowdy spectators who screamed at umpires and cheered like mad as the Philadelphia Athletics and St. Louis Browns fought to the bitter end for the 1883 pennant.In The Summer of Beer and Whiskey, Edward Achorn re-creates this wondrous and hilarious world of cunning, competition, and boozing, set amidst a rapidly transforming America. It is a classic American story of people with big dreams, no shortage of chutzpah, and love for a brilliant game that they refused to let die.

The World Atlas of Coffee: From Beans to Brewing -- Coffees Explored, Explained and Enjoyed


James Hoffmann - 2014
    From overviews of the world's most vibrant coffee-growing regions, to step-by-step brewing tutorials, the content is educational, thought-provoking, and substantial. I've already recommended this book to Barista Magazine readers countless times. -- Sarah Allen, Editor Barista MagazineA beautiful world guide to the brown bean.Taking the reader on a global tour of coffee-growing countries, The World Atlas of Coffee presents the bean in full-color photographs and concise, informative text. It shows the origins of coffee -- where it is grown, the people who grow it; and the cultures in which coffee is a way of life -- and the world of consumption -- processing, grades, the consumer and the modern culture of coffee.Plants of the genus Coffea are cultivated in more than 70 countries but primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa. For some countries, including Central African Republic, Colombia, Ethiopia, and Honduras, coffee is the number one export and critical to the economy.Organized by continent and then further by country or region, The World Atlas of Coffee presents the brew in color spreads packed with information. They include:The history of coffee generally and regionally The role of colonialism (for example, in Burundi under colonial rule of Belgium, coffee production was best described as coercive. Every peasant farmer had to cultivate at least 50 coffee trees near their home.) Map of growing regions and detail maps Charts explaining differences in growing regions within a country Inset boxes (For example, what is the Potato Defect? Is Cuban coffee legal in the United States?) The politics of coffee and the fair trade, organic and shade grown phenomena Beautiful color photographs taken in the field. Americans consume 400 million cups of coffee per day, equivalent to 146 billion cups of coffee per year, making the United States the leading consumer of coffee in the world. The World Atlas of Coffee is an excellent choice for these coffee lovers.

Cider


Annie Proulx - 1980
    From choosing the right apples through reaping the liquid rewards of a successful pressing, this classic guide has you covered. With detailed drawings of cider-making equipment, methods, and set-up, even a novice juicer will enjoy sweet and spicy gallons in no time. Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols provide insightful, time-tested advice enlivened by a smattering of historical anecdotes. Whether you like your cider sweet or hard, you’re sure to find a recipe that satisfies.

How to Make Coffee: The Science Behind the Bean


Lani Kingston - 2015
    But you're not just anyone. You are a coffee aficionado, a determined, fearless seeker of the best java. And this is the guide for you.                       How to Make Coffee provides an in-depth look at the art and science behind the bean. Learn the anatomy of coffee; the chemistry of caffeine; the best way to roast, grind, and brew the beans to their peak flavor; and what gadgets you really need (versus what gadgets are for mere coffee dilettantes). With illustrated, step-by-step instructions, How to Make Coffee is for the person who doesn't want to settle for anything less than the perfect cup.

The Essential Scratch Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert: Take a Whiff of That


Richard Betts - 2013
    In the first book of its kind, he helps readers scratch and sniff their way to expertise by introducing the basic components of wine—the fruits, the wood, the earth—enabling anyone to discover the difference between a Syrah and a Sangiovese and get the glass they love every time. Humorously illustrated, with 16 scents, this irresistible gift puts the fun back in wine fundamentals.

The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats


Daniel Stone - 2018
    But as a new century approached, appetites broadened, and David Fairchild, a young botanist with an insatiable lust to explore and experience the world, set out in search of foods that would enrich the American farmer and enchant the American eater.Kale from Croatia, mangoes from India, and hops from Bavaria. Peaches from China, avocados from Chile, and pomegranates from Malta. Fairchild's finds weren't just limited to food: From Egypt he sent back a variety of cotton that revolutionized an industry, and via Japan he introduced the cherry blossom tree, forever brightening America's capital. Along the way, he was arrested, caught diseases, and bargained with island tribes. But his culinary ambition came during a formative era, and through him, America transformed into the most diverse food system ever created.

Brewdog: Craft Beer for the People


Richard Taylor - 2017
    Well known for their crowd-funded, rapid expansion and iconoclastic approach, the company now has a wide range of award-winning craft beers (67 to date) that are stocked by every major retailer, 55 BrewDog-branded bars around the world and has just opened a major brewery in Ohio. Their first beer book focuses on explaining craft beer to the widest possible audience. It includes: a survey of what makes craft beer greathow to understand different beer styleshow to cook with beer and match beers with food and even how to brew your own. Designed in the highly individual style of the brand, the book includes quirky features such as spaces to place a drop of beer once you've ticked a particular beer off your 'to-drink' list and a DIY beer mat.

Who Owns the Future?


Jaron Lanier - 2013
    Who Owns the Future? is his visionary reckoning with the most urgent economic and social trend of our age: the poisonous concentration of money and power in our digital networks.Lanier has predicted how technology will transform our humanity for decades, and his insight has never been more urgently needed. He shows how Siren Servers, which exploit big data and the free sharing of information, led our economy into recession, imperiled personal privacy, and hollowed out the middle class. The networks that define our world—including social media, financial institutions, and intelligence agencies—now threaten to destroy it.But there is an alternative. In this provocative, poetic, and deeply humane book, Lanier charts a path toward a brighter future: an information economy that rewards ordinary people for what they do and share on the web.

Devoured: From Chicken Wings to Kale Smoothies--How What We Eat Defines Who We Are


Sophie Egan - 2016
    Egan explores why these values make for such an unstable, and often unhealthy, food culture and, paradoxically, why they also make America’s cuisine so great.Egan raises a host of intriguing questions: Why does McDonald’s have 107 items on its menu? Why are breakfast sandwiches, protein bars, and gluten-free anything so popular? Will bland, soul-less meal replacements like Soylent revolutionize our definition of a meal? The search for answers takes her across the culinary landscape, from the prioritization of convenience over health to the unintended consequences of “perks” like free meals for employees; the American obsession with “having it our way” to the surge of Starbucks, Chipotle, and other chains individualizing the eating experience; from high culture—artisan and organic and what exactly “natural” means—to low culture—the sale of 100 million Taco Bell Doritos Locos Tacos in ten weeks. She also looks at how America’s cuisine—like the nation itself—has been shaped by diverse influences from across the globe.Forked weaves together insights from the fields of psychology, anthropology, food science, and behavior economics as well as myriad examples from daily life to create a powerful and unique look at food in America.

Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation


Andrew Marantz - 2019
     For several years, Andrew Marantz, a New Yorker staff writer, has been embedded in two worlds. The first is the world of social-media entrepreneurs, who, acting out of naïvete and reckless ambition, upended all traditional means of receiving and transmitting information. The second is the world of the people he calls "the gate crashers"—the conspiracists, white supremacists, and nihilist trolls who have become experts at using social media to advance their corrosive agenda. Antisocial ranges broadly—from the first mass-printed books to the trending hashtags of the present; from secret gatherings of neo-Fascists to the White House press briefing room—and traces how the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and then how it becomes reality. Combining the keen narrative detail of Bill Buford's Among the Thugs and the sweep of George Packer's The Unwinding, Antisocial reveals how the boundaries between technology, media, and politics have been erased, resulting in a deeply broken informational landscape—the landscape in which we all now live. Marantz shows how alienated young people are led down the rabbit hole of online radicalization, and how fringe ideas spread—from anonymous corners of social media to cable TV to the President's Twitter feed. Marantz also sits with the creators of social media as they start to reckon with the forces they've unleashed. Will they be able to solve the communication crisis they helped bring about, or are their interventions too little too late?

Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol


Mallory O'Meara - 2021
    Skinny martinis. Vodka sodas with lime. These are the cocktails that come in sleek-stemmed glasses, bright colors and fruity flavors—these are the Girly Drinks.From the earliest days of civilization, alcohol has been at the center of social rituals and cultures worldwide. But when exactly did drinking become a gendered act? And why have bars long been considered “places for men” when, without women, they might not even exist?With whip-smart insight and boundless curiosity, Girly Drinks unveils an entire untold history of the female distillers, drinkers and brewers who have played a vital role in the creation and consumption of alcohol, from ancient Sumerian beer goddess Ninkasi to iconic 1920s bartender Ada Coleman. Filling a crucial gap in culinary history, O’Meara dismantles the long-standing patriarchal traditions at the heart of these very drinking cultures, in the hope that readers everywhere can look to each celebrated woman in this book—and proudly have what she’s having.

Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal


Melanie Warner - 2013
    She began an investigative journey that took her to research labs, university food science departments, and factories around the country. What she discovered provides a rare, eye-opening, and sometimes disturbing, account of what we're really eating. Warner looks at how decades of food science have resulted in the cheapest, most abundant, most addictive, and most nutritionally inferior food in the world, and she uncovers startling evidence about the profound health implications of the packaged and fast foods that we eat on a daily basis.Combining meticulous research, vivid writing, and cultural analysis, Warner blows the lid off the largely undocumented, and lightly regulated, world of chemically treated and processed foods and lays bare the potential price we may pay for consuming even so-called healthy foods.

Wired to Eat: How to Rewire Your Appetite and Lose Weight for Good


Robb Wolf - 2017
    - One month to reset your metabolism for lasting fat loss - One week to discover the carbs that are right for you- With weekly shopping lists and over 70 fully-anglicised recipes In WIRED TO EAT, superstar US diet expert, Paleo sensation and New York Times bestselling author of THE PALEO SOLUTION Robb Wolf will show you how to change your eating habits for good, tailor your diet to fit your personal needs and shed weight fast – and never put it back on!

Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine


George M. Taber - 2005
    At this legendary contest -- a blind tasting -- a panel of top French wine experts shocked the industry by choosing unknown California wines over France's best. George M. Taber, the only reporter present, recounts this seminal contest and its far-reaching effects, focusing on three gifted unknowns behind the winning wines: a college lecturer, a real estate lawyer, and a Yugoslavian immigrant. With unique access to the main players and a contagious passion for his subject, Taber renders this historic event and its tremendous aftershocks -- repositioning the industry and sparking a golden age for viticulture across the globe. With an eclectic cast of characters and magnificent settings, Judgment of Paris is an illuminating tale and a story of the entrepreneurial spirit of the new world conquering the old.

The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food


Dan Barber - 2014
    Instead, Barber proposes Americans should move to the 'third plate,' a cuisine rooted in seasonal productivity, natural livestock rhythms, whole-grains, and small portions of free-range meat.