September 2020 Prime Picks
The
Culinary Corner
Advanced
Home Baking
Jaclyn Rodriguez
Rockridge Press
9781646118632
$19.99
www.rockridgepress.com
Advanced Home Baking: Recipes for Mastering Sweet
& Savory Bakes
is more than just another baking cookbook. It shows how to create
edible works
of art that are visually exceptional and appealing, from a decadent
Chocolate
Bourbon Pecan Pie to multicolored Macarons.
Color photos
liberally pepper a cookbook which focuses on providing home bakers with
the
tools to produce foolproof fare. It also tells how to handle baking
disasters,
turning potential problems into ingredients for success.
These 80
recipes for
breads, pastries, and frostings are surprisingly easy to reproduce and
represent
outstanding opportunities for cooks to elevate their baking efforts
into
visually exceptional results.
Old Southern
Cookery
Sue J. Hendricks and
Christopher E. Hendricks
Globe Pequot
9781493049059
$26.95
www.globepequot.com
Old Southern Cookery: Mary Randolph's Recipes from
America's First
Regional Cookbook Adapted for Today's Kitchen represents a
joint endeavor
to translate a historical classic for modern times, presenting the
dishes of
Mary Randolph, who published her cookbook almost two centuries ago.
While that
cookbook
became a bestseller throughout the country and remained in print for
some 190
years as the first regional American cookbook (and the first on
Southern cooking),
this reinterpretation for modern times represents a personal endeavor
that
stemmed from Christopher Hendricks's mother's interpretations of the
dishes.
The story of
Randolph
and her classic food is included in a selection that appeals to modern
cooks
with not just revamped dishes, but color photos throughout.
Readers with
a
special affinity for international flavors who are interested making
some
unusual dishes from scratch such as forcemeat, an ancient food recipe
that
appeared in early Imperial Roman times, and staples such as Scrambled
Eggs with
Tomatoes, will find these dishes simple and easy to reproduce at home.
The added
value of reviews
of competing cookery books and culinary
traditions makes for this highly recommended book as
notable for its
place in culinary history as for its accessible, inviting recipes.
Sweet Savory
Spicy
Sarah Tiong
Page Street
Publishing
9781645670469
$25.00
www.pagestreetpublishing.com
Sweet Savory Spicy: Exciting Street Market Food
from Thailand,
Cambodia, Malaysia and More gathers recipes for many
mainstays which can be
easily produced at home, and is recommended for Asian food enthusiasts
who want
to try their hand at such fare as Malaysian Chicken Satay, Mayalsian
Grilled
Whole Fish with Sambal, crispy and tangy Son-in-Law Eggs, and more.
Access to a
well-stocked Asian market for such ingredients as tamarind paste, fish
sauce,
Siracha sauce, or Thai basil will enhance efforts to reproduce these
classics,
while color photos of the finished dishes leave nothing to wonder about
polished results.
There's even
a whole
chapter devoted to various Southeast Asian sauces.
Between the
classic
fare and the relatively easy steps to making them, Sweet
Savory Spicy is a top recommendation for modern cooks who
would successfully and easily reproduce Asian street foods at home.
The Truth
About Baked
Beans
Meg Muckenhoupt
New York University
Press
9781479882762
$24.47
www.nyupress.org
Readers might
anticipate that The
Truth about Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England will be solely about the evolution of baked
beans and their impact on New England fare, but in actually, this
lively, wide-reaching
culinary history embraces history and various recipes as it surveys
early New
England culture and culinary approaches.
The opening question of the
story, revolving around when
Bostonians began making Boston Baked Beans, evolves into an outstanding
exploration of the region's culinary myths, realities, and classic fare
from
1870 to modern times.
Stories embrace legends,
cooking, and the origins of
these dishes in a lively, fun survey that will delight not just cooks
who like
history, but New England-connected readers looking for a different kind
of
local flavor.
The Truth about
Baked Beans's exceptional blend of scholarship and social
inspection will
delight those who like good food, good recipes, and solid insights into
New
England's influences and evolution.
The Arts
American
Art:
Collecting and Connoisseurship
Stephen M. Sessler,
General Editor
Merrell
9781858946825
$70.00
www.merrellpublishers.com
American Art: Collecting and Connoisseurship
is highly recommended
reading for both new and experienced collectors of 19th and 20th
century
American art, and is the only book to provide an insider's guide to
buying,
selling, valuing, and safely housing art pieces of all kinds.
Almost
thirty writers
who are experts in the art world consider the process of collecting,
from
understanding quality and influences on valuation to problems in
storing and displaying
art. Many cautions, including what to watch for and how to properly
interpret
and display a collection, provide a wide-ranging critical consideration
of not
just collecting and housing art, but the process of assessing each
piece's
overall relevance and importance.
Packed with
color
photos throughout, this blend of art collecting history and practical
applications is very highly recommended as a foundation 'must have'
acquisition
for art libraries and any individual more than casually involved in art
acquisition.
Archiphantasy
Alexander Wong
Images Publishing/ACC
Artbooks
9781864708035
$85.00
www.accartbooks.com/us
Archiphantasy represents architect
Alexander Wong's first
monograph, offering arts collections a weighty, impressively oversized
gathering of his cinematic and interior designs.
The oblong
presentation and full-page, full color depictions of his many
architectural
wonders, from box offices and business to lavish homes with creatively
unique
bathroom and entertainment areas, provides inspiration and innovation
to arts
audiences. The invaluable addition of his essays, which provide written
testimony to the perspectives cultivated by his designs, lend
invaluable clues
to the artist's approach to melding fantasy with traditional
architectural
design.
The result
is an
exceptional celebration of Wong's creative craft which holds the
potential to
link the seemingly disparate worlds of aesthetic and detail-oriented
architectural
design. Its wide-ranging interiors, created for vastly different
purposes and
impact, are particularly notable and outstandingly depicted.
When You
Can't Go
Home
Karisa Keasey
Independently
Published
9781733176750
$35.00
www.karisakeasey.com
When You Can't Go Home: Portraits of Refugees in
the Pacific Northwest
will appeal to followers of immigrant American culture, contemporary
watercolor
painters, and social issues alike. It's synthesis of stories about
immigrants
and refugees, backed by artistic representations of their features.
This
satisfying blend
of lovely watercolor paintings and the added value of their stories as
they
escaped or left homelands in search of new lives in the Pacific
Northwest
creates a powerful testimony to the resilience of refugees and their
special
plight.
Sales of When You Can't Go Home also to to World
Relief. The survey of the social and political challenges facing the
refugee
population in modern America is nicely done and visually evocative.
Social
issues and
arts collections alike will find When You
Can't Go Home an outstanding, hard-hitting addition. It
contrasts and
personalizes a host of experiences from countries around the world,
bringing
all to life with an artist's flare for capturing expression, emotion,
and
detail.
Reviewer's Choice
Climb
Susan Spann
Prometheus Books
9781633885929
$26.95
www.prometheus.com
Climb: Leaving Safe and Finding Strength on 100
Summits in Japan provides
an absorbing, revealing story of a California attorney and mystery
author who
spent 40 years living cautiously, then decided to climb a hundred of
Japan's
most famous mountains. Amidst her decision, a cancer diagnosis that
initially
seemed to thwart her newfound ambition became yet another impetus for
transformation and hope.
Climb isn't just about mountains. It's
about challenging
self-imposed limits and overcoming adversity to embark on a journey of
healing
and freedom. As Susan Spann breaks the chains of her staid life and
embraces a
new culture and physical challenges on many levels, her revealing
personal saga
creates a vital, inspirational set of inspections. These encourage
readers to
identify their own safety nets and think about challenging themselves
to arrive
at more meaningful, better-healed lives.
Climb is highly recommended not just for
its adventure travel, but
for the inner journey it encourages and represents.
Double Lives
Helen McCarthy
Bloomsbury Publishing
9781408870739
$30.00
www.bloomsbury.com
Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood
is a weighty,
absorbing consideration of British working mothers past and present who
moved
from a minority a century ago to the modern workforce, where
three-quarters of
mothers are employed.
The
transformation of
lives and society to accept their position as important members of the
workforce is traced in Double Lives,
which uses a wealth of source material to consider the evolving history
and
status of British mothers in the business world.
From how
family and
career choices were modified to the evolution of professional women in
the
workforce and their changing social image over the years, Double Lives examines a range of
influential policies, from
changing childcare to child welfare concerns, that held important
impacts on changing
women's roles.
No casual
read, this
well-referenced, 500+ page examination is especially highly recommended
for
college-level readers of women's history, civil rights, and British
business.
The Nature
of Nature
Enric Sala
National Geographic
9781426221019
$28.00
www.nationalgeographic.com/books
The Nature of Nature: Why We Need the Wild
comes from a marine
ecologist who considers why humans should preserve Earth's biodiversity
against
all threats from human endeavors.
It links the
value of
this endeavor to Enric Sala's own scientific and social awakening,
adding
scientific examinations that point to the interconnected nature of
Earth's
ecological systems and using examples that range from bacteria to
mammals to demonstrate
why the wild natural world is so essential to human health.
Sala's book
is more
than just a consideration of nature's value. He focuses on wild places
remaining in the world and links business interests to the process of
assuring that
they have a place in human economic affairs.
A centerfold
of color
photos provides visual emphasis for this important blend of human
affairs and
scientific, social, and economic arguments supporting preservation
efforts. The Nature of Nature is a
key
acquisition for anyone who would argue for the value of safeguarding
rather
than controlling and using up the last wild areas of the planet.
The
Photographer's
Guide to Luminar 4
Jeff Carlson
Rocky Nook
9781681984049
$34.95
www.rockynook.com
The Photographer's Guide to Luminar 4 is
recommended reading for
both professional and amateur photographers looking for tools to create
memorable photos.
Luminar 4
offers
photographers better control over manipulating RAW and JPEG images.
Many of the
advanced features of Photoshop, from using layers and masks to blending
tools,
are included in Luminar 4, but it also works with other popular photo
apps to
enhance their editing routines and results, as well.
Photographer
Jeff
Carlson provides a basic review of Luminar 4's many features and
possibilities,
packing this book with step-by-step editing examples and contrasting
images to
clarify how different settings and effects work.
The
exercises and variety
of applications and visual photo examples will delight newcomers to the
program,
as well as professionals, who all receive clear, contrasting examples
of
Luminar 4's many possibilities.
Race and the
Wild
West
Laura J. Arata
University of
Oklahoma Press
9780806164977
$24.95
www.oupress.com
Race and the Wild West: Sarah Bickford, the Montana
Vigilantes, and the
Tourism of Decline, 1870-1930 provides the powerful biography
of a woman
born to slavery in eastern Tennessee in the mid-1800s, who journeyed to
Monatana Territory to settle in the mining town of Virginia City.
Until this
book,
relatively little has been revealed about her life. Assistant Professor
of
History Laura J. Arata conducted detailed research and analysis to
probe the
achievements of this nearly-forgotten woman, who was a successful
business
owner and chronicler of history.
Bickford's
ability to
dispel and confront myths of race in the rural West and her goals to
preserve
both buildings and history creates an engrossing reading especially
recommended
for those interested in black women's experiences and early pioneers of
heritage history preservation.
Thunder in
the West
Richard W. Etulain
University of
Oklahoma Press
9780806166254
$29.95
www.oupress.com
Thunder in the West: The Life and Legends of Billy
the Kid examines
a legend and joins many other books on the classic Western figure, but
with a
difference. This book uses new research to contrast the myths and
stories about
Billy's life and death, examining the evolution of dime novel drama
that
appeared during his lifetime and the news reports, novels, and movies
that celebrated
his outlaw life and encounters.
There are a
number of
different interpretations of this iconic Western outlaw. Richard W.
Etulain
contrasts them with an eye to considering their sources, truths, and
lasting
impact on the image of not just Billy the Kid, but the Old West.
Seldom are
popular heroes
or outlaws truly good or evil. Thunder in
the West reflects this balanced perception as it considers
Billy's legendary
status, life, and the wellsprings of different interpretative avenues
that
evolved around him to contribute to the greater story of American
Western
history as a whole.
Western
history
readers are in for a treat, here!
The
Vanishing Trial
Robert Katzberg
Mascot Books
9781645432180
$26.95
www.mascotbooks.com
The Vanishing Trial: The Era of Courtroom
Performers and the Perils of
Its Passing comes from a lawyer with four decades in the
justice system. It
reflects not only on his evolving career as a New York federal
prosecutor, but
the changing face of citizen juries and involvements in the
administration of
justice.
There have
been many
changes in federal courtroom processes and concepts of justice during
the time
Katzberg was active in federal courtrooms. This history of social and
judicial
changes alike is captured in a close inspection that holds key insights
essential to understanding contemporary trial approaches, limitations,
and
concepts.
What is it
really
like to be a high-profile prosecutor, and how is the relationship
changing
between lawyers and juries? Not just the present incarnation, but the
future of
American justice is captured in this exposé of the history and
changing atmosphere of trial proceedings.
The Vanishing Trial should be required
reading not just for justice
system professionals, but anyone who would sit on a jury and understand
the
underlying influences on its processes and the concept of justice.
Young Adult/Children
Candlewick
Press
www.candlewick.com
Five new
arrivals are
highly recommended picks for young picture book readers and adults
looking for original,
bright productions.
Jane
Clarke's Leap Frog (9781536212051,
$14.99) is one
such example. It's illustrated by Britta Teckentrup's beautifully
bright
drawings and invites kids to look for Felix the tree frog, who is
unlike the
other frogs in the pond.
Kids learn
fun facts
about tree frogs, couched in the story of Felix, who is fearful about
his
environment and the sounds, sights, and other creatures that inhabit
it. The
fictional embellishment of these nonfiction facts makes for a
particularly inviting
story line.
Mara
Rockliff's Jefferson Measures a Moose
(9780763694104, $17.99) is illustrated by S.D. Schindler, who provides
engaging
drawings to accompany the biography of Thomas Jefferson and his passion
for
numbers and learning.
When faced
by European
ignorance of America's attractions, he uses these numbers to prove his
points
and help non-Americans better understand this country's natural history.
Kids with
good
reading skills who are interested in lively biographical sketches will
find Jefferson's
story unusual in its focus and presentation.
Ann Stott's Nana Says I Will Be Famous One Day
(9780763695606, $16.99) is illustrated by Andrew Joyner, and provides
the fine
story of a Nana who never misses her grandson's shows, games, or
concerts. Nana
is a positive, forthright supporter and fan of her grandson. When she's
injured, it's up to him to support her, in turn. But, how?
This fine
story of
family support and relationships is intense, colorful, and highly
recommended.
Amy Krouse
Rosenthal's
Choo-Choo School (9780763697426,
$14.99) is illustrated by Mike Yamada and features seven train cars
that make
tracks to their first day of school. As the train theme blends with
school
objectives ("Gym is for blowing off steam"), train-crazy kids will
appreciate
the playful approach to classroom learning and how it translates to the
train
world.
Philip
Ardagh's Bunnies on the Bus
(9781536211160,
$16.99) benefits from illustrator Ben Mantle's work in animation and
provides
an engaging set of experiences and insights about a set of wild bunnies
on the
bus.
A rollicking
rhyme ("Bunnies on the bus!/Bunnies on the
bus! No wonder there's a fuss/about the bunnies on the bus!")
lends
whimsical atmosphere to bunnies who take different approaches to the
bus ride.
All are
engaging
stories that stand out from the crowd, making them highly recommended
for
library or at-home reading.
Penguin
www.penguin.com/kids
These new
picture
books are standouts for schools and parents looking for exceptional
leisure
reads for kids.
Eric Carle's
Happy Halloween from the Very Busy Spider
(9780593097106, $12.99) gives at-home readers a lovely rhyming
lift-the-flap
board book about a busy spider who is looking for her friends.
An inviting
format
and Eric Carle's vivid, appealing drawings pack a story that lends to
read-aloud fun as questions are asked, spider perceptions are gathered,
and
kids use the flaps and dazzling, hidden answers to join in on the fun
of a busy
spider's seasonal enjoyments.
Tina Cho's The Ocean Calls (9781984814869, $17.99)
creates
a Haenyeo mermaid story, and will require good reading skills or
parental
assistance.
Dayeon wants
to be a
Haenyeo like Grandma, a Korean woman diver who gets treasures from the
sea.
There's only one problem—a frightening memory keeps Dayeon from
fulfilling her
family destiny.
Can she
learn to
overcome her fears to join in a long-held tradition? Lovely drawings by
muralist Jess X. Snow bring this gentle folk tale to life.
Deborah
Underwood's Every Little Letter
(9780525554028,
$17.99) receives whimsical, fun, colorful drawings by Joy Hwang Ruiz as
it
tells of a little letter that lives in a city surrounded by walls made
of big
letters, designed to keep out other, different letters.
These big
letters
feel safe behind this wall, hidden from the differences in the outside,
but one
small, curious letter wonders about that world. When she finds an
opening and
other letters, she realizes their fears may be unfounded in this
intriguing story
of friendship and discovery.
Roald Dahl's
How to Spot a Witch (9780593097113,
$9.99) receives charming drawings by Carmi Grau as it provides young
readers
and read-aloud parents with a zany story of real witches who hide their
dangerous possibilities within countenances that look very much like
real
women.
A real witch
hates
children, has "magic in her fingers and devilry dancing in her
blood", and is filled with plots and schemes.
The various
reflections and themes of this story are quasi-adult in their content,
but will
make for a fun read-aloud for parents and kids alike.
Together We
Grow
Susan Vaught and
Kelly Murphy
Simon & Schuster
9781534405868
$17.99
Together We Grow joins an award-winning
novelist and a New York
Times bestselling illustrator in a lovely picture book story of farm
animals
that are driven indoors by a storm.
The fox
family isn't
part of their circle, but they too are threatened by the weather. Where
will
they seek refuge?
Ages 4 to 8
receive a
picture book story of generosity, sharing, and adversity that excels in
gorgeous drawings and a message about opening one's home and heart to
those in
need.
Together We Grow promotes the benefits of
unity and caring. Parents
will find them to be important lessons for the very young.
The Twelve
Birdies of
Christmas
Jennifer Sattler
Sleeping Bear Press
9781534110946
$8.99
www.sleepingbearpress.com
Adults
looking for
outstanding holiday board books will relish The
Twelve Birdies of Christmas, a humorous spin on the classic
Christmas story
that creates an accessible read for the very young.
Colorful
illustrations encourage counting and comedy alike as the true love
bequeaths 2
purple doves, 3 French hens, and more birds that all sport hilariously
different countenances than the original story.
Engaging and engrossing, The Twelve Birdies of Christmas will keep read-aloud parents and kids laughing together.