Browse by Categories - Non-fiction
Robyn OkrantWhat happens when a thirty-five-year-old average American woman spends one year following every piece of Oprah Winfrey's advice on how to live your best life? Robyn Okrant devoted 2008 to adhering to all of Oprah's suggestions and guidance delivered via her television show, her Web site, and her magazine. LIVING OPRAH is a month-by-month account of that year.
Some of the challenges included enrollment in Oprah's Best Life Challenge for physical fitness and weight control, living vegan, and participating in Oprah's Book Club. After 365 days of LIVING OPRAH, Okrant reflects on the rewards won and lessons learned as well as the tolls exacted by the experiment.
Susanne FreidbergThat rosy tomato perched on your plate in December is at the end of a great journey—not just over land and sea, but across a vast and varied cultural history. This is the territory charted in Fresh. Opening the door of an ordinary refrigerator, it tells the curious story of the quality stored inside: freshness.
We want fresh foods to keep us healthy, and to connect us to nature and community. We also want them convenient, pretty, and cheap. Fresh traces our paradoxical hunger to its roots in the rise of mass consumption, when freshness seemed both proof of and an antidote to progress. Susanne Freidberg begins with refrigeration, a trend as controversial at the turn of the twentieth century as genetically modified crops are today. Consumers blamed cold storage for high prices and rotten eggs but, ultimately, aggressive marketing, advances in technology, and new ideas about health and hygiene overcame this distrust.
Freidberg then takes six common foods from the refrigerator to discover what each has to say about our notions of freshness. Fruit, for instance, shows why beauty trumped taste at a surprisingly early date. In the case of fish, we see how the value of a living, quivering catch has ironically hastened the death of species. And of all supermarket staples, why has milk remained the most stubbornly local? Local livelihoods; global trade; the politics of taste, community, and environmental change: all enter into this lively, surprising, yet sobering tale about the nature and cost of our hunger for freshness.
Robert SabbagAround midnight on June 17, 1979, Air New England Flight 248, en route from New York, crashed into the woods on Cape Cod. The pilot was killed. The first officer and several passengers, struggling to escape the wreckage of the aircraft, clung to life for an hour and a half in the wilderness before rescuers found them. They survived with trauma both physical and emotional. Among them was Robert Sabbag, the author of Snowblind and other works of nonfiction.
Down Around Midnight is Sabbag’s gripping account of the crash and of his candid attempt to come to terms with its aftermath. He tracks down his fellow survivors, seeing them for the first time since they saved one another’s lives in the darkness thirty years before. He talks to firefighters, hospital staff, family members, and others who were present on the night of the tragedy, weaving the narrative between past and present to create a thrilling and affecting story of survival and recovery.
Evan SchwartzFinding Oz tells the remarkable tale behind one of the world’s most enduring and best loved stories. Offering profound new insights into the true origins and meaning of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 masterwork, it delves into the personal turmoil and spiritual transformation that fueled Baum’s fantastical parable of the American Dream.
Christian DavenportThe war story that needs to be told: a Washington Post reporter follows five courageous National Guard soldiers as they deploy to Iraq, survive combat, and come home to pick up the pieces
The Iraq War radically transformed the typical “one weekend a month, two weeks a year” commitment of many National Guard soldiers around the country into lengthy, grueling tours of duty in Iraq. Little has been written about the tens of thousands of guardsmen and women sent to Iraq and the unique challenges these citizen-soldiers have faced in serving their country–and then coming home to the civilian world. Washington Post reporter Christian Davenport was embedded with the Virginia National Guard's 2-224th Aviation Regiment and witnessed the hardship and heroism of its members firsthand, from their sudden call-up, through their return from overseas, to new battles faced on the home front as they struggle to rebuild their lives after the war. He tells the story of five of these remarkable soldiers–a teacher, a 50-something Vietnam vet, a sorority-girl-turned-door-gunner, a born leader, and a young woman unable to find her place in the world. By continuing to follow these soldiers, and their families, for more than a year after their tour, Davenport chronicles the difficulties they face returning home: lost jobs, financial woes, and the inability to relate to a society that has never been so divorced from the war its country was fighting. Depicting these soldiers as heroes, not victims, As You Were reveals a hidden dimension of the war, and provides an intimate look at the patriotism and courage that inspire those who have fought in it–and the rest of us as well.
Christian Davenport (Washington, DC) is a reporter for the Washington Post. He was embedded with the Virginia National Guard's 2-224th Regiment, and his work covering the military helped uncover some of the iconic photographs of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Dave CullenDave Cullen is a journalist and author who has contributed to Slate, Salon, and the New York Times. He is considered the nation's foremost authority on the Columbine killers, and has also written extensively on Evangelical Christians, gays in the military, politics, and pop culture. A graduate of the MFA program at the University of Boulder, Cullen has won several writing awards, including a GLAAD Media Award, Society of Professional Journalism awards, and several Best of Salon citations.
Herve This An internationally renowned chemist, popular television personality, and bestselling author, Herv? This heads the first laboratory devoted to molecular gastronomy -- the scientific exploration of cooking and eating. By the testing recipes that have guided cooks for centuries, and the various dictums and maxims on which they depend, Herv? This unites the head with the hand in order to defend and transform culinary practice.
With this new book, Herv? This's scientific project enters an exciting new phase. Considering the preparation of six bistro favorites -- hard-boiled egg with mayonnaise, simple consomm?, leg of lamb with green beans, steak with French fries, lemon meringue pie, and chocolate mousse -- he isolates the exact chemical properties that tickle our senses and stimulate our appetites. More important, he connects the mind and the stomach, identifying methods of culinary construction that appeal to our memories, intelligence, and creativity. By showing that the creation of a meal is as satisfying as its consumption, Herv? This recalibrates the balance between food and our imaginations. The result is a revolutionary perspective that will tempt even the most casual cooks to greater flights of experimentation.
Stephen LeebIn the most dramatic and most important book that Leeb has written to date, he shows how the combination of several key factors -- including inflation, the every weakening dollar, the soaring price of oil, increasing competition from China and India, and our runaway national debt -- are going to make for a very rocky road for Americans in the next few years.
Carlos FriasTake Me With You is written through the unique eyes of a first-generation Cuban-American seeing the forbidden country of his ancestry for the first time. Take Me With You provides a fresh view of Cuba, devoid of overt political commentary, focusing instead on the gritty, tangible lives of the people living in Castro's Cuba. Frias takes in the island nation of today and attempts to reconstruct what the past was like for his parents, retracing their footsteps, searching for his roots, and discovering his history. The book creates lasting and unexpected ripples within his family on both sides of the Florida Straits -- and on the author himself.
Tavis SmileyAccountable provides real-life examples of how crucial issues -- including health care, education, the economy, unequal justice, and the environment -- manifest themselves in our communities. The book demonstrates the urgent need to hold politicians and ourselves responsible, because the stakes have never been higher. Accountable examines present-day conditions and the consequences for America. At its core, this book is a tool with which the community can evaluate the successes or failures of its political leaders and of itself. This insightful book acknowledges the mistakes of the past while offering hope and inspiration for a better future.
