All she knew about her was that the baby had been born in Wuhu, a city in southern China, and left near a police station in her first three days of life. Her birth mother had left a note with Lulu's western and lunar birth dates. In 1999 Emily and her daughter–now a happy, fearless four-year-old--returned to China to find out more. That journey and its discoveries unfold in this lovely, touching and sensitively observed book.In Wuhu Diary, we follow Emily and LuLu through a country where children are doted on yet often summarily abandoned and where immense human friendliness can coexist with outbursts of state-orchestrated hostility–particularly after the U. S. accidentally bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. We see Emily unearthing precious details of her child’s past and LuLu coming to terms with who she is. The result is a book that will delight anyone interested in China, and that will move and instruct anyone who has ever adopted--or considered adopting--a child.

    Standing on the engine of a train as it rushes past fields of prickly cactus; witnessing his first bullfight in Mexico while high on opium; catching up with the beat night life in New York; burying himself in the snow-capped mountains of north-west America; meditating on a sunlit roof in Tangiers; or falling in love with Montmartre and the huge white basilica of Sacré-Coeur – Kerouac reveals the endless diversity of human life and his own high-spirited philosophy of self-fulfilment.

    At the same time, she can't shake the fact that she is the daughter of two back-to-the-land hippies who taught her to love nature and eat vegetables. Ambivalent about repeating her parents' disastrous mistakes, yet drawn to the idea of backyard self-sufficiency, Carpenter decided that it might be possible to have it both ways: a homegrown vegetable plot as well as museums, bars, concerts, and a twenty-four-hour convenience mart mere minutes away. Especially when she moved to a ramshackle house in inner city Oakland and discovered a weed-choked, garbage-strewn abandoned lot next door. She closed her eyes and pictured heirloom tomatoes, a beehive, and a chicken coop.What started out as a few egg-laying chickens led to turkeys, geese, and ducks. Soon, some rabbits joined the fun, then two three-hundred-pound pigs. And no, these charming and eccentric animals weren't pets; she was a farmer, not a zookeeper. Novella was raising these animals for dinner. Novella Carpenter's corner of downtown Oakland is populated by unforgettable characters. Lana (anal spelled backward, she reminds us) runs a speakeasy across the street and refuses to hurt even a fly, let alone condone raising turkeys for Thanksgiving. Bobby, the homeless man who collects cars and car parts just outside the farm, is an invaluable neighborhood concierge. The turkeys, Harold and Maude, tend to escape on a daily basis to cavort with the prostitutes hanging around just off the highway nearby. Every day on this strange and beautiful farm, urban meets rural in the most surprising ways.For anyone who has ever grown herbs on their windowsill, tomatoes on their fire escape, or obsessed over the offerings at the local farmers' market, Carpenter's story will capture your heart. And if you've ever considered leaving it all behind to become a farmer outside the city limits, or looked at the abandoned lot next door with a gleam in your eye, consider this both a cautionary tale and a full-throated call to action. Farm City is an unforgettably charming memoir, full of hilarious moments, fascinating farmers' tips, and a great deal of heart. It is also a moving meditation on urban life versus the natural world and what we have given up to live the way we do.(jacket)

    The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations.    Marcus Samuelsson was only three years old when he, his mother, and his sister—all battling tuberculosis—walked seventy-five miles to a hospital in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Adaba. Tragically, his mother succumbed to the disease shortly after she arrived, but Marcus and his sister recovered, and one year later they were welcomed into a loving middle-class white family in Göteborg, Sweden. It was there that Marcus’s new grandmother, Helga, sparked in him a lifelong passion for food and cooking with her pan-fried herring, her freshly baked bread, and her signature roast chicken. From a very early age, there was little question what Marcus was going to be when he grew up.Yes, Chef chronicles Marcus Samuelsson’s remarkable journey from Helga’s humble kitchen to some of the most demanding and cutthroat restaurants in Switzerland and France, from his grueling stints on cruise ships to his arrival in New York City, where his outsize talent and ambition finally come together at Aquavit, earning him a coveted New York Times three-star rating at the age of twenty-four. But Samuelsson’s career of  “chasing flavors,” as he calls it, had only just begun—in the intervening years, there have been White House state dinners, career crises, reality show triumphs and, most important, the opening of the beloved Red Rooster in Harlem. At Red Rooster, Samuelsson has fufilled his dream of creating a truly diverse, multiracial dining room—a place where presidents and prime ministers rub elbows with jazz musicians, aspiring artists, bus drivers, and nurses. It is a place where an orphan from Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, living in America, can feel at home. With disarming honesty and intimacy, Samuelsson also opens up about his failures—the price of ambition, in human terms—and recounts his emotional journey, as a grown man, to meet the father he never knew. Yes, Chef is a tale of personal discovery, unshakable determination, and the passionate, playful pursuit of flavors—one man’s struggle to find a place for himself in the kitchen, and in the world.

    After his parents’ marriage fell apart, he was dragooned in, at the age of 22, to pick up the pieces of their new venture, a barely-trading country house hotel that had, frankly, seen better days. Not only was it posting an annual loss, but the fabric of the building was crumbling and there was no money left to make improvements. There were to be battles royal with neighbours not wanting their status quo to be altered, and with the local fire authority who sought to impose draconian new safety measures.Over the years, and with the steepest of learning curves, the grand old building was renovated and transformed to meet the requirements of the modern discerning traveller. Accolades for the hotel and its restaurant were won; together they became a well-regarded destination for a number of celebrities – and those that deemed themselves to be celebrities but were not. Stories abound featuring idiosyncratic guests, overbearing public bodies, fractured family life and animals of all shapes and sizes. The local fire station next door was demolished one foggy night, people were frightened by flying dogs and snakes in the long grass, and there were, as befits a country house, strange goings on in the night. Many were the guests who checked in who really should not have been seen together.A rescue mission originally thought of as lasting for a year or two turned into a 35 year lifetime love affair with a beautiful old building. This is a tribute to all the people behind the scenes who helped to make the hard-won transformation into a great success.

    Here is the story of this “Louvre of lox” (The Sunday Times, London): its humble beginnings, the struggle to keep it going during the Great Depression, the food rationing of World War II, the passing of the torch to the next generation as the flight from the Lower East Side was beginning, the heartbreaking years of neighborhood blight, and the almost miraculous renaissance of an area from which hundreds of other family-owned stores had fled. Filled with delightful anecdotes about how a ferociously hardworking family turned a passion for selling perfectly smoked and pickled fish into an institution with a devoted national clientele, Mark Russ Federman’s reminiscences combine a heartwarming and triumphant immigrant saga with a panoramic history of twentieth-century New York, a meditation on the creation and selling of gourmet food by a family that has mastered this art, and an enchanting behind-the-scenes look at four generations of people who are just a little bit crazy on the subject of fish.

    Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends. By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion.

    Buck first flew in the 1920s, inspired by the exploits of Charles Lindbergh. In 1930, at age sixteen, he flew solo from coast to coast, breaking the junior transcontinental speed record. In 1936 he flew nonstop from Burbank, California, to Columbus, Ohio, in a 90-horsepower Monocoupe to establish a world distance record for light airplanes. He joined Transcontinental and Western Air (T&WA) as a copilot in 1937; when he retired thirty-seven years later, he had made more than 2,000 Atlantic crossings -- and his role had progressed from such tasks as retracting a DC-2's landing gear with a cockpit-based hand pump to command of a wide-body 747. Buck's experiences go back to a time when flying was something glamorous. He flew with and learned from some true pioneers of aviation -- the courageous pilots who created the airmail service during flying's infancy. At the behest of his employer Howard Hughes, Buck spent three months flying with Tyrone Power on a trip to South America, Africa, and Europe. He flew the New York-Paris-Cairo route in the days when flight plans called for lengthy stopovers, and enjoyed all that those romantic places had to offer. He took part in a flight that circled the globe "sideways" (from pole to pole). He advised TWA's president on the shift to jet planes; a world expert on weather and flight, Buck used a B-17G to chase thunderstorms worldwide as part of a TWA-Air Force research project during World War II, for which he was awarded the Air Medal (as a civilian) by President Truman.In "North Starover My Shoulder," Bob Buck tells of a life spent up and over the clouds, and of the wonderful places and marvelous people who have been a part of that life. He captures the feel, taste, and smell of flying's greatest era -- how the people lived, what they did and felt, and what it was really like to be a part of the world as it grew smaller and smaller. He relates stories from his innumerable visits to Paris, the city he loves more than any other -- echoing Gertrude Stein's view that "America is my country, and Paris is my home town" -- and from his trips to the Middle East, including flights to Israel before and after it became a state. A terrific storyteller and a fascinating man, Bob Buck has turned his well-lived life into a delightful memoir for anyone who remembers when there really was something special in the air.

    This irresistibly entertaining book recounts the random incidents and soul-searching that inspired a reluctant party boy to devote his life to a cause, without ever abandoning his sense of mischief and fun. "Everyone has a tense moment in their career that makes them wonder, how the hell did I get into this mess?" writes Mathews. "For me, it was when I was dressed as a carrot to promote vegetarianism outside an elementary school in Des Moines, and a pack of obese pig farmers showed up and peeled off slices of bologna for kids to throw at me." As the irreverent force behind the colorful crusades carried out by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), one of the most effective and enduring pressure groups in the world, Mathews has strutted naked before a fur convention in Tokyo, halted GM's use of animals in crash tests by storming the carmaker's float in the Rose Parade dressed as a rabbit, and crashed a fashion show in Milan dressed as a priest. With self-deprecating wit and candor, Mathews reveals all the edgy details of his unorthodox coming-of-age and equally outrageous career.With backdrops such as the rock scene in Hollywood and London, the inner sanctums of New York high fashion, jails in Hong Kong and Boston, and a psychiatric ward in Paris, "Committed" spotlights the adventures life can offer when you don't abandon your youthful ideals and imagination.

    It was to her utter surprise that this middle-aged, out-of-shape mother found herself on the starting line of a triathlon.In Women Who Tri, DiFabio explores the triathlon phenomenon that has gripped her town and swept the nation.Her memoir is both inspiring and informative as it explores the popularity, psychology, subculture, and transformative power of triathlons among -ordinary- women. Set in a small New Jersey town that now hosts America's largest women-only triathlon club, Women Who Tri weaves together the insights of a psychologist, the research of a journalist, and the deep insecurities of a daunted newbie.DiFabio shares her journey from nervous newcomer to triathlon finisher as she investigates one of the world's most challenging and inspiring sports. She profiles women who have overcome challenges to become athletes and tri for themselves and to help others. Women Who Tri will entertain, enlighten, and inspire any triathlon enthusiast, from tri-addicts to the tri-curious.

    In Made in Reality, Stephanie gives an exclusive insight into the trials and tribulations of life on reality TV, taking us behind the scenes of The Hills, Made in Chelsea and even the Big Brother House. Nothing is off-limits, from the drama of her relationship with Spencer Matthews, to her issues with her brother Spencer Pratt. But there is more to Stephanie than the glamour of Beverly Hills and the Kings Road. For the first time, she shares her struggles with drug addiction, eating disorders, and the pressures of fame in the internet age.Inspiring, fascinating, and insightful throughout, this is an honest account of the truth behind reality.

    Though I didn't regret anything, flat on my back in the doctor's office on the cusp of my fiftieth birthday, my health was crumbling.I no longer recognized myself.I turned my head and saw a calendar on the wall: Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah beckoned me with its mysterious sandstone hoodoos.A road trip traveling through the national parks was just what I needed to rediscover the girl I'd been. It could help me turn a corner into my new career as a writer, and my husband would enjoy a chance to photograph the natural wonders we saw. Sometimes, a twelve-thousand-mile road trip is also a personal quest. An absorbing travel narrative about defining and facing the limitations and opportunities of midlife. KIRKUS

    Instead, he founded our nation's leading nonprofit organization for protecting factory farmed animals. In Mercy For Animals, Nathan brings us into the trenches of his organization's work; from MFA's early days in grassroots activism, to dangerous and dramatic experiences doing undercover investigations, to the organization's current large-scale efforts at making sweeping legislative change to protect factory farmed animals and encourage compassionate food choices.But this isn't just Nathan's story. Mercy For Animals examines how our country moved from a network of small, local farms with more than 50 percent of Americans involved in agriculture to a massive coast-to-coast industrial complex controlled by a mere 1 percent of our population--and the consequences of this drastic change on animals as well as our global and local environments. We also learn how MFA strives to protect farmed animals in behind-the-scenes negotiations with companies like Nestle and other brand names--conglomerates whose policy changes can save countless lives and strengthen our planet. Alongside this unflinching snapshot of our current food system, readers are also offered hope and solutions--big and small--for ending mistreatment of factory farmed animals. From simple diet modifications to a clear explanation of how to contact corporations and legislators efficiently, Mercy For Animals proves that you don't have to be a hardcore vegan or an animal-rights activist to make a powerful difference in the lives of animals.

    We all claim to care about animals and to regard them as having at least some moral value. We all claim to agree that it’s wrong to inflict “unnecessary” suffering and death on animals and—whatever disagreement we may have about when animal use is necessary—we all agree that the suffering and death of animals cannot be justified by human pleasure, amusement, or convenience. We condemn Michael Vick for dogfighting precisely because we feel strongly that any pleasure that Vick got from this activity could not possibly justify what he did. So how can we justify the fact that we kill many billions of land animals and fish every year for food? However “humanely” we treat and kill these animals, the amount of animal suffering we cause is staggering. Yet no one maintains that animal foods are necessary for optimal health. Indeed, mounting empirical evidence points to animal foods being detrimental for human health. But however you evaluate that evidence, there can be no serious doubt that we can have excellent health with a vegan diet. There is also broad consensus that animal agriculture is an ecological disaster. Animal agriculture is responsible for water pollution, air pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, inefficient use of plant protein and water, and all sorts of other environmental harms. The best justification we have for the unimaginable amount of suffering and death that we impose on animals is that they taste good. We enjoy the taste of animal foods. But how is this any different from Michal Vick claiming that his dogfighting operation was justifiable because he enjoyed watching dogs fight? Vick liked sitting around a pit watching animals fight. We enjoy sitting around a summer barbecue pit roasting the corpses of animals who had lives and deaths that were as bad as, if not worse than, Vick’s dogs. What is the difference between Michael Vick and those of us who eat animal foods? This book shows there is no difference, or at least not any difference that matters morally. Prof. Gary L. Francione and Prof. Anna Charlton argue that if you think animals matter morally—if you reject the idea that animals are just things—your own beliefs require that you stop eating animal products. There is nothing "extreme" about a vegan diet; what is extreme is the inconsistency between what we say we believe and how we act where animals are concerned. Many of us are uneasy thinking about the animals who end up on our plates. We may have thought about stopping our consumption of animal products, but there are many excuses that have kept us from doing so. The authors explore the 30+ excuses they have heard as long-time vegans and address each one, showing why these excuses don’t work. Packed with clear, commonsense thinking on animal ethics, without jargon or complicated theory, this book will change the way you think about what you eat.

    Rife with breakdowns, meaty puns, the burdens of instant celebrity and more Wiener Whistles than anyone could ever hope for, Ihlenfeld's uproarious recounting of his time behind the wheel is a coming-of-age story-as irreverent as it is touching-of learning about life, love, and (sausage) links, ultimately arriving at the realization that that the future is anything but a straight road.