Three Many Cooks: One Mom, Two Daughters: Their Shared Stories of Food, Faith & Family


Pam Anderson - 2015
    Now acclaimed cookbook author Pam Anderson and her daughters, Maggy Keet and Sharon Damelio, blend compelling reflections and well-loved recipes into one funny, candid, and irresistible book.   Together, Pam, Maggy, and Sharon reveal the challenging give-and-take between mothers and daughters, the passionate belief that food nourishes both body and soul, and the simple wonder that arises from good meals shared. Pam chronicles her epicurean journey, beginning at the apron hems of her grandmother and mother, and recounts how a cultural exchange to Provence led to twenty-five years of food and friendship. Firstborn Maggy rebelled against the family’s culinary ways but eventually found her inner chef as a newlywed faced with the terrifying reality of cooking dinner every night. Younger daughter Sharon fell in love with food by helping her mother work, lending her searing opinions and elbow grease to the grueling process of testing recipes for Pam’s bestselling cookbooks.  Three Many Cooks ladles out the highs and lows, the kitchen disasters and culinary triumphs, the bitter fights and lasting love. Of course, these stories would not be complete without a selection of treasured recipes that nurtured relationships, ended feuds, and expanded repertoires, recipes that evoke forgiveness, memory, passion, and perseverance: Pumpkin-Walnut Scones, baked by dueling sisters; Grilled Lemon Chicken, made legendary by Pam’s father at every backyard cookout; Chicken Vindaloo that Maggy whipped up in a boat galley in the Caribbean; Carrot Cake obsessively perfected by Sharon for the wedding of friends; and many more.   Sometimes irreverent, often moving, always honest, this collection illustrates three women’s  individual and shared search for a faith that confirms what they know to be true: The divine is often found hovering not over an altar but around the stove and kitchen table. So hop on a bar stool at the kitchen island and join them to commiserate, laugh, and, of course, eat!Advance praise for Three Many Cooks   “This beautiful book is a stirring, candid, powerful celebration of mothers, daughters, and sisters, and of family, food, and faith. The stories are relatable and real, and are woven perfectly with the time-tested, mouthwatering recipes. I loved every page, every word, and am adding this to the very small pile of books in my life that I know I’ll pick up and read again and again.”—Ree Drummond, New York Times bestselling author of The Pioneer Woman Cooks  “As a little story about mac and cheese illustrates, when it comes to family, the trick is to make a masterpiece with the ingredients you’ve got. Three Many Cooks is the perfect encouragement to work with what we have: one another.”—Kelly Corrigan, New York Times bestselling author of Glitter and Glue   “Pam Anderson is the consummate test cook—smart, thorough, and curious. Her new book, Three Many Cooks, puts cooking in the context it ultimately belongs, at the center of friends and family.”—Christopher Kimball, founder and editor, America’s Test Kitchen   “A wonderful, honest account of food and family, Three Many Cooks deliciously reveals what I’ve suspected all along: Cooking for people you love pays back enormous dividends.”—Jenny Rosenstrach, New York Times bestselling author of Dinner: The Playbook

A Fighting Chance


Elizabeth Warren - 2014
    Early marriage and motherhood seemed to put even that dream out of reach, but fifteen years later she was a distinguished law professor with a deep understanding of why people go bankrupt. Then came the phone call that changed her life: could she come to Washington DC to help advise Congress on rewriting the bankruptcy laws?Thus began an impolite education into the bare-knuckled, often dysfunctional ways of Washington. She fought for better bankruptcy laws for ten years and lost. She tried to hold the federal government accountable during the financial crisis but became a target of the big banks. She came up with the idea for a new agency designed to protect consumers from predatory bankers and was denied the opportunity to run it. Finally, at age 62, she decided to run for elective office and won the most competitive—and watched—Senate race in the country. In this passionate, funny, rabble-rousing book, Warren shows why she has chosen to fight tooth and nail for the middle class—and why she has become a hero to all those who believe that America's government can and must do better for working families.

We Bought a Zoo


Benjamin Mee - 2008
    In the tradition of "Marley & Me" comes an unforgettable memoir about the mysteries of the animal kingdom, the power of family, and the triumph of hope over tragedy in this chronicle of the Mee family's purchase of the Dartmoor Wildlife Park, a dilapidated zoo in the English countryside.Weinstein Books

Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over


Nell Irvin Painter - 2018
    Nell Irvin Painter's journey is filled with surprises, even as she brings to bear the incisiveness of her insights from two careers, which combine in new ways even as they take very different approaches—one searching for facts and cohesion, the other seeking the opposite. She travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, such as Alice Neel, Faith Ringgold, or Maira Kalman, even as she comes to understand how they are undervalued; and struggles with the ever-changing balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful demands of a life fully lived.

Resistance: A Songwriter's Story of Hope, Change, and Courage


Tori Amos - 2020
    From her unnerving depiction of sexual assault in "Me and a Gun" to her post-9/11 album Scarlet's Walk to her latest album Native Invader, her work has never shied away from intermingling the personal with the political.Amos began playing piano as a teenager for the politically powerful at hotel bars in Washington, D.C., during the formative years of the post-Goldwater and then Koch-led Libertarian and Reaganite movements. The story continues to her time as a hungry artist in L.A. to the subsequent three decades of her formidable music career. Amos explains how she managed to create meaningful, politically resonant work against patriarchal power structures-and how her proud declarations of feminism and her fight for the marginalized always proved to be her guiding light. She teaches readers to engage with intention in this tumultuous global climate and speaks directly to supporters of #MeToo and #TimesUp, as well as young people fighting for their rights and visibility in the world.Filled with compassionate guidance and actionable advice-and using some of the most powerful, political songs in Amos's canon-this book is for readers determined to steer the world back in the right direction.

Brat: An '80s Story


Andrew McCarthy - 2021
    Elmo's Fire, Weekend at Bernie's, and Less than Zero, and as a charter member of Hollywood's Brat Pack. That iconic group of ingenues and heartthrobs included Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, and Demi Moore, and has come to represent both a genre of film and an era of pop culture. In his memoir Brat: An '80s Story, McCarthy focuses his gaze on that singular moment in time. The result is a revealing look at coming of age in a maelstrom, reckoning with conflicted ambition, innocence, addiction, and masculinity. New York City of the 1980s is brought to vivid life in these pages, from scoring loose joints in Washington Square Park to skipping school in favor of the dark revival houses of the Village where he fell in love with the movies that would change his life. Filled with personal revelations of innocence lost to heady days in Hollywood with John Hughes and an iconic cast of characters, Brat is a surprising and intimate story of an outsider caught up in a most unwitting success.

Sex Object: A Memoir


Jessica Valenti - 2016
    Now, in a darkly funny and bracing memoir, Valenti explores the toll that sexism takes from the every day to the existential. Sex Object explores the painful, funny, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti’s adolescence and young adulthood in New York City, revealing a much shakier inner life than the confident persona she has cultivated as one of the most recognizable feminists of her generation. In the tradition of writers like Joan Didion and Mary Karr, this literary memoir is sure to shock those already familiar with Valenti’s work and enthrall those who are just finding it.