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  Delights and Prejudices

  James Beard

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  A richly evocative memoir from the man whom the New York Times dubbed the “dean of American cookery,” recalling the flavors of his past In this delightful culinary journey, James Beard takes us back to the earliest days of his childhood when he started developing his precocious palate and lifelong “taste memories”—the ability to savor and remember the tastes and sensations of food. His enthusiasm for flavors, no matter how bold, would define Beard for the rest of his life.   From devouring a raw onion as an infant to scouring the globe in search of local flavors as an adult, Delights and Prejudices is full of witty and illuminating stories that open a door into the world of one of America’s first and perhaps greatest epicures.   Packed with more than one hundred fifty recipes, including corn chili soufflé, fried oysters, and peach preserves, this very personal account of his life is as close to an autobiography as Beard ever penned. For those who love to cook or simply love to eat, there remains no better teacher than James Beard.

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  Above the Battle - An Air...

  Ronald Lyell Munro

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  A rare memoir of serving as an AOP pilot—one of the most daring and dangerous jobs in World War II. Includes maps and photos.   In April 1943, a young officer arrived at Penshurst to join C Flight, 653 Squadron. He was no ordinary pilot, and this was no ordinary RAF outfit. Lyell Munro was a soldier and 653 was an Air Observation Post Squadron whose pilots were Royal Artillery and whose ground crew were RAF.   AOP pilots were expert gunners, skilled flyers, and incurable rule breakers. Flying from airstrips just behind the front lines, without armament and often with no parachute, they controlled the fire of hundreds of guns and their enemies learned to dread the sight of the little green Austers in the skies above the battlefield. An incautious movement, a puff of smoke or a chance flash of reflected sunlight could bring tons of high explosives raining down.   They flew alone without ground control, scanning the skies constantly while they directed the guns. Closing at over 250mph, an attacking ME 109 left no time for indecision. Reactions had to be instinctive and evasive action instant. Failure was fatal. After the war ended, the survivors went back into civilian life and few histories mention them or what they did. Lyell’s is one of only two personal accounts that are known to exist, and it is likely that there will be no more. Written for his family and his comrades in C Flight, Above the Battle is a story told without heroics, but with a deep affection for the men with whom he flew and worked.

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  Shiksa Goddess - (Or How I Spent...

  Wendy Wasserstein

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  Though celebrated playwright Wendy Wasserstein was firmly rooted in New York's cultural life, her appeal is universal. Shiksa Goddess collects her urbane, inspiring, and deeply empathetic essays, all written when she was in her forties, and all infused with her trademark irreverent humor. The full range of Wasserstein'             s mid-life obsessions are covered in this eclectic collection—             everything from Chekhov, politics, and celebrity to family, fashion, and real estate. Whether fretting over her figure, discovering her gentile roots, or writing tenderly about her very Jewish mother and her own daughter—              born when Wendy was forty-eight and single—             Wasserstein reveals the full, dizzying life of a shiksa goddess with unabashed candor and inimitable style.

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  The Red-Headed Pilgrim

  Kevin Maloney

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  On a sunny day in a business park near Portland, Oregon, forty-two-year-old web developer Kevin Maloney is in the throes of an existential crisis that finds him shoeless in a field of Queen Anne's lace, reflecting on the tumultuous events that brought him to this moment. Growing up in the suburbs, young Kevin suffered "a psychological break that ripped me from my humdrum existence" mainlining high fructose corn syrup and episodes of The Golden Girls. Thus begins a journey of hard-earned insights and sexual awakening that takes Kevin from angst-ridden Beaverton to the beaches of San Diego, a frontier-themed roadside attraction in Helena, Montana, and a hermetic shack on an organic lettuce farm.Everything changes when Kevin falls in love with Wendy. After a chance tarot reading lands them on the frigid coast of Maine, their lives are unsettled by the birth of their daughter, Zoë, whose sudden presence is oftentimes terrifying, frequently disturbing, and yet—miraculously—always wondrous.The Red-Headed Pilgrim is an irresistible novel of misadventure and new beginnings, of wanderlust and bad decisions, of parenthood and divorce, and of the heartfelt truths we unearth when we least expect it.

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  The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth...

  Frances Wilson

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  Described by the writer and opium addict Thomas De Quincey as "the very wildest . . . person I have ever known," DorothyWordsworth was neither the self-effacing spinster nor the sacrificial saint of common telling. A brilliant stylist in her own right, Dorothy was at the center of the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century. She was her brother William Wordsworth's inspiration, aide, and most valued reader, and a friend to Coleridge; both borrowed from her observations of the world for their own poems.William wrote of her, "She gave me eyes, she gave me ears."In order to remain at her brother's side, Dorothy sacrificed both marriage and comfort, jealously guarding their close-knit domesticity—one marked by a startling freedom from social convention. In the famed Grasmere Journals, Dorothy kept a record of this idyllic life together. The tale that unfolds through her brief, electric entries reveals an intense bond between brother and sister, culminating in Dorothy's dramatic collapse on the day of William's wedding to their childhood friend Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy lived out the rest of her years with her brother and Mary. The woman who strode the hills in all hours and all weathers would eventually retreat into the house for the last three decades of her life.In this succinct, arresting biography, Frances Wilson reveals Dorothy in all her complexity. From the coiled tension of Dorothy's journals, she unleashes the rich emotional life of a woman determined to live on her own terms, and honors her impact on the key figures of Romanticism.

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  The Triumph and Tragedy of...

  Joseph A. Califano Jr.

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  President Lyndon Johnson was bigger than life—and no one who worked for him or was subjected to the "Johnson treatment" ever forgot it. As Johnson's "Deputy President of Domestic Affairs," Joseph A. Califano's unique relationship with the president greatly enriches our understanding of our thirty-sixth president. Califano shows listeners LBJ's commitment to economic and social revolution, and his willingness to do whatever it took to achieve his goals. He uncorks LBJ's legislative genius and reveals the political guile it took to pass laws in civil rights, poverty, immigration reform, health, education, environmental protection, consumer protection, the arts, and communications.A no-holds-barred account of Johnson's presidency, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson is an intimate portrait of a president whose towering ambition for his country and himself reshaped America—and ultimately led to his decision to withdraw from the political arena in which he fought so hard.

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