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History and Current EventsMay 2015
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"Around our house, my experiments were regarded as little more than mildly amusing, sort of weird, and definitely gross. My food collection was a funny little hobby. Until the guacamole incident." ~ from Melanie Warner's Pandora's Lunchbox
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New and Recently Released!
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Don't be afraid of the bullets : an accidental war correspondent in Yemen
by Laura Kasinof
"Laura Kasinof studied Arabic in college and moved to Yemen a few years later--after a friend at a late-night party in Washington, DC, recommended the country as a good place to work as a freelance journalist. When she first moved to Sanaa in 2009, she was the only American reporter based in the country. She quickly fell in love with Yemen's people and culture, in addition to finding herself the star of a local TV soap opera. When antigovernment protests broke out in Yemen, part of the revolts sweeping the Arab world at the time, she contacted the New York Times to see if she could cover the rapidly unfolding events for the newspaper. Laura never planned to be a war correspondent, but found herself in the middle of brutal government attacks on peaceful protesters. As foreign reporters were rounded up and shipped out of the country, Laura managed to elude the authorities but found herself increasingly isolated--and even more determined to report on what she saw. Don't be Afraid of the Bullets is a fascinating and important debut by a talented young journalist"
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Lone star Muslims : transnational lives and the South Asian experience in Texas
by Ahmed Afzal
"Lone Star Muslims offers an engaging and insightful look at contemporary Muslim American life in Texas. It illuminates the dynamics of the Pakistani Muslim community in Houston, a city with one of the largest Muslim populations in the south and southwestern United States. Drawing on interviews and participant observation at radio stations, festivals, and ethnic businesses, the volume explores everyday Muslim lives at the intersection of race, class, profession, gender, sexuality, and religious sectarianaffiliation to demonstrate the complexity of the South Asian experience. Importantly, the volume incorporates narratives of gay Muslim American men of Pakistani descent, countering the presumed heteronormativity evident in most of the social science scholarship on Muslim Americans and revealing deeply felt affiliations to Islam through ritual and practice. It also includes narratives of members of the highly skilled Shia Ismaili Muslim labor force employed in corporate America, of Pakistani ethnic entrepreneurs, the working class and the working poor employed in Pakistani ethnic businesses, of community activists, and of radio program hosts. Decentering dominant framings that flatten understandings of transnational Islam and Muslim Americans, such as 'terrorist' on the one hand, and 'model minority' on the other, Lone Star Muslims offers a glimpse into a variety of lived experiences. It shows how specificities of class, Islamic sectarian affiliation, citizenship status, gender, and sexuality shape transnational identities and mediate racism, marginalities, and abjection"
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| The Wilderness of Ruin: A Tale of Madness, Boston's Great Fire, and the Hunt... by Roseanne MontilloIn Gilded Age Boston, a serial criminal stalked, tortured, and sometimes killed children in working-class neighborhoods. Roseanne Montillo's The Wilderness of Ruin explores the criminal investigation that identified the murderer and the resulting international medical and judicial debate over the nature of criminal minds. Drawing on contemporaneous accounts, including the killer Jesse Pomeroy's autobiography, Montillo employs the "graphic descriptive powers of a historical novelist" (Kirkus Reviews) to produce a rich and gripping narrative of the murders and of Boston's late-19th-century history. For another disturbing analysis, focused more on Pomeroy than the historical context, read Harold Schechter's Fiend. |
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| Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan KoeppelIn this absorbing biological and cultural history of the banana, journalist Dan Koeppel traces the seedless, sexless fruit's journey from its Asian birthplace to Africa, where it became a staple crop, to the Caribbean and Central America, where it became the foundation of an industry capable of making (and breaking) entire nations. Banana also takes readers to labs where scientists develop new varieties, hoping to create a disease-resistant type. For more on the banana industry, check out Peter Chapman's Bananas or Rich Cohen's The Fish That Ate the Whale, a biography of United Fruit Company's founder Samuel Zemurray. |
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| The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food... by Mark KurlanskyDescribing regional specialties from Montana's fried beaver tail to Sioux and Chippewa dishes to Maine lobster, the essays collected here were originally part of a 1930s Works Progress Administration (WPA) project called "America Eats." Thousands of writers (some well known) wrote about foods found across the country, but the guide was never completed. In The Food of a Younger Land, historian Mark Kurlansky (known for his microhistories Cod and Salt) has selected essays from the archived project and compiled them, including recipes, illustrations, and local slang. If you're looking for something different to prepare, don't miss out on this "culinary and historical keepsake" (Publishers Weekly). |
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| For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed... by Sarah RoseUntil the early 19th century, large-scale tea cultivation took place only in China, which closely guarded trade in the popular drink. Hoping to break this monopoly, the East India Company sent Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to obtain young plants and smuggle them to India, where Britain ruled. In For All the Tea in China, journalist Sarah Rose provides an exciting account of Fortune's adventures in Chinese territory (where Westerners were unwelcome) and describes how he transplanted Camellia sinensis to the Indian Himalayan region. For another engaging history of the plant and beverage, check out Jeff Koehler's Darjeeling (to be released this month), which focuses on Himalayan tea. |
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| The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600... by Tristram StuartIn The Bloodless Revolution, historian Tristram Stuart explores the origins and development of vegetarianism, which was relatively unknown in Western society until the 17th century. The earliest vegetarians were inspired by a variety of biblical, philosophical, and scientific considerations, but by the 18th century Hindu influences spread to Europe, and later, socio-political theories connecting upper-class oppression and meat-eating emerged from the French Revolution. Tracing the increasingly complex vegetarian movement into the 21st century, Stuart outlines its connections to environmentalism as well as nutrition theory and advocacy for animal rights. He also supplies fascinating brief biographies of selected vegetarians in this "marvelously researched" (Booklist) book. |
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| Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal by Melanie WarnerAfter noticing that a slab of processed cheese can keep its color and shape for years, journalist Melanie Warner embarked on an investigative journey to learn about the production of packaged foods. Visiting research labs, food science departments, and factories, she gathered information about foods from breakfast cereal to soy meat-substitutes. In Pandora's Lunchbox, she describes what she learned and also reviews the history of food safety regulation. Considering additives from preservatives to vitamins, as well as nutritional value lost during processing, Warner concludes that it's best to avoid processed foods when possible. Kirkus Reviews praises her book as a "well-researched, nonpreachy, worthwhile" report. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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