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ERIC'S PICKS |
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For the culinarily inclined and those on the sauce:
Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon, by Claudia Roden
Library Journal (Sunday , October 15, 2006), says: “A well-known authority
on Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food [author of The Book of Jewish Food: An
Odyssey from Samarkand to New York], Roden turns to the cuisines and culinary
heritages of three Mediterranean countries that all were at one time the
center of an empire. She notes that in each there is renewed interest in the
culinary past, as well as increasing popularity of the various regional cuisines.
She has chosen more than 150 recipes from Morocco, Tukey, and Lebanon, some newly
discovered, some variations on more familiar dishes, and a selection of favorite
classic dishes. Each section opens with a fascinating insider's guide, providing
both cultural and culinary history as well as information on specific ingredients
and techniques. Recipes are grouped into chapters on starters and meze dishes
(or mezze or kemia, depending on the country), main courses, and desserts, and
include both simple country dishes such as a Chicken Pie with Onions and Sumac from
Lebanon and more sophisticated ones such as Turkish Seared Tuna with Lemon Dressing.
Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass,
by Natalie MacLean
If Berkeley’s king wine importer Kermit Johnson blurbs it, it must be pretty good,
and we like the fact that she makes no bones about liking the wooziness the stuff bestows.
Sufi Cuisine, by Halici Nevin
Get higher still on rose petals & mystic poetry while supping on lamb and figs...
For the Philosophe (no bullshit, and no kidding around!)
On Truth and Taking Ourselves Seriously & Getting it Right,
by Harry Frankfurt
OK, his big little book last year, On Bullshit, was cute and serious at the same time,
but Harry’s really not kidding. Seriously!
Frankfurt is retired out of Princeton, where he taught knitting and philosophy, I believe. Shakespeare’s Philosophy, by Colin McGinn.
McGinn teaches at Rutgers and purportedly “isn’t at all dusty.” Or something like that.
For the inveterate gallery-goer
Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock, by Kirk Varnedoe
Varnedoe goes boldly where few want, or have the chops, to tread.
He’s the late Varnedoe now, but he was an influential curator at MOMA in NYC. Looks like he knew this stuff inside out. Still Looking: Essays on American Art, by John Updike
Updike updates an earlier collection (1989's Just Looking)
with lovely essays on pre-Pollack pictures of somethings.
For the mathematically minded
King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved
Geometry, by Siobhan Roberts
Hey, somebody had to do it and who better than one of those nice Canadians!
The whole durned thing (geometry, that is) had apparently fallen into a bit of disrepute
until this fella got going on it. Do they wear kilts in Canada? They ought to,
don’t you think?
Dr. Euler’s Fabulous Formula: Cures Many Mathematical Ills, by Paul J. Nahin
The publisher recommends you have two years of college math under your belt
(specifically, calculus and differential equations) belt before you start in on this
lively little book, but if that doesn’t scare you off, go to it! There’s a cute
limerick on the jacket flap, so what the hey! Also, the author says right there in
his preface that to mathematicians ten thousand years hence, "Euler's formula will
still be beautiful and stunning and untarnished by time."
For the unbeliever
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
Oh boy, religion’s in for it now! (No offense intended– we do understand after all that
it’s Christmas, and so readily acknowledge that it’s a little inconsiderate to rail
against God or rather posit that he ain’t there and ain’t never been while simultaneously
taking advantage of all those plumped up sales and the gifts we personally receive
given that the whole thing does hinge on some, er, religious underpinnings— and we do
recognize that intelligent people do differ on certain rather momentus subjects for
reasons none of us quite understand!– Still, Dawkins (almost rhymes with Darwin) is probably
a pretty smart guy and he’s on a tear about this subject.)
For the urban planner
Sprawl: A Compact History, by Robert Bruegmann
I’ll leave the jokes to the author in this case. As to the subject, he digs it really,
so if it’s bellyaching about suburbia you want, you’d better look elsewhere.
For those fascinated with empire and the glory that was Rome
Caesar: Life of a Colossus, by Adrian Goldsworthy
The upstart and already eminent military historian Goldsworthy offers what should be
the “definitive biography” of Caesar for some time to come...
For those considering some current implications of same
Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger, by Arjun Appadurai
Don’t know the source of the comments printed below, but here they are:
Globalization's promises of open markets, large sums of financial capital, and enlightened
constitutional rule have deteriorated into all-too-frequent nightmarish scenarios of
insurmountable economic inequality within and between nations, inflamed hatred of
the United States, terrorist attacks on civilians, and genocidal ethnic cleansing.
The author of these brief, penetrating essays investigates globalization's dark side
and, most significantly, demonstrates that "small number" minorities have become both
victimized and victimizer. Appadurai is Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic
Affairs at the New School, its John Dewey Professor of Social Science, and the author
of "Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization" and "Globalization," the
co-founder of "Public Culture" journal, and the co-founder and co-director of
Interdisciplinary Network on Globalization.The Al-Qaeda 9/11 terrorist attacks were not
only acts of war against the United States but also, as the author claims, attacks
against the integrity of nation-states as political entities. Al-Qaeda demonstrated
how small numbers of terrorists could quickly alter international relations. Modern
terrorists have formed "cellular" structures and organizations that use new information
technologies to gain trans-nation support: "small number" cells have taken advantage of
globalization's flaws to recruit members and sympathizers to causes that transcend national
boundaries. The perpetrators of the 2005 London bombings were an undereducated and
undervalued small number of youth who identified with international terrorists and
not with Great Britain's third world minorities. In this instance theoppressed became
the aggressors.An interesting case presented here shows that the conservative Indian
Hindu Party, in its attempt to marginalize India's Muslim minority, portrays it as
conspirators in a Pakistani movement to destroy India. The author also explains that
the United States has encountered its own "fear of small numbers" in Iraq, where minority
coalitions continue to kill American troops, in contradiction to the Bush administration's
prediction that U.S. forces would be welcomed as liberators.As Appadurai concludes,
the world is full of Sikhs, Basques, Kurds, and other angry minorities,
who as potential victims of ethnic cleansing themselves, are prepared to create or
join existing terrorists cells. Yet, the author ends with a cautiously optimistic
appraisal of a growing number of beneficial cellular organizations that promote human
rights and ecological balance---Greenpeace and Doctors Without Borders among them.
Ultimately, this thought-provoking investigation warns that the balance of civilization
might be determined by which set of "small number" groups---the progressive or the
terrorist---prevail.
For Those Who’d Rather Be Puttering In The Garden Than
Thinking About All That
Native Treasures: Gardening with the Plants of California,
by M. Nevin Smith
The publisher, University of California Press, says Smith is a highly respected
horticulturalist and practitioner and a gifted writer, so who are we to question?
Plus, many lovely pictures, or, as they say, beautifully illustrated with color photos and line drawings. For the Engineer, the Designer & the Armchair Psychologist
Success Through Failure: The Paradox of Design, by Henry Petroski
From the man who brought you The Pencil (as distinct from the pencil itself).
Some anonymous reviewer had this to say about his latest: “The book is a page-turner,
with an intensity that builds as you read. I found myself waiting for discussions of
various topics--from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to the space shuttle--only to find
them before me several pages later. A must-read for any design engineer, or anyone
who wants to understand how great designs evolve.” All out of free pocket protectors,
folks... sorry about that. But really.. “Booklist” says, “From ancient Roman engineers
dismayed at the failure of stone-arch bridges to twenty-first-century American architects
stunned by the collapse of the Twin Towers, designers have frequently learned valuable
principles through hard tutelage. Lucid and concise, this study invites nonspecialists to
share in the challenge of trial-and-error engineering.”
And somebody else says that Petroski’s moral is that success breeds hubris and catastrophe... Sounds relevant to us... For the hopeful
Speaking of Earth: Environmental Speeches That
Moved the World , by Alon Tal
From Rachel Carson’s 1963 address to the Garden Club of America to Wangari Maathai’s
speech on acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, by way of Vandana Shiva and,
who’d a thunk it, Margaret Thatcher on global warming! We’re still sitting on a half
dozen copies of Al Gore’s book, by the way.
Don’t you wanna give it ta somebody? For those interested in the long look back
A Little History of the World, by E. H. Gombrich
And who’da thunk this one had never been translated into English ‘til now?
Gombrich wrote it for youngsters 70 years ago, but updated and reworked it in
2001 just as he was shuffling off this mortal coil. Gombrich, you may recall,
became an eminent art historian, but first he wrote this, in Vienna, in 1935, in
six weeks’ time, an unemployed youngster with a freshly minted doctorate in art
history, and had it promptly banned by the Nazis as “too pacifist” and translated
into eighteen languages, though not the one we mostly read here in Amurica.
Oh, and did we neglect to mention that we’ve just stocked
one entire copy of the big ol’ new
Oxford World Atlas
It weighs in at something like 59 pounds and will cost you $80. We’ll restock it if somebody buys the sucker.
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