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Staff Pick

Having and Being Had

Having and Being Had

Biss, Eula
$18.00
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, NPR, INSTYLE, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

"A sensational new book [that] tries to figure out whether it's possible to live an ethical life in a capitalist society. . . . The results are enthralling." --Associated Press

A timely and arresting new look at affluence by the New York Times bestselling author, "one of the leading lights of the modern American essay." --Financial Times

"My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts," Eula Biss writes, "the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after." Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist now embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into. Through a series of engaging exchanges--in libraries and laundromats, over barstools and backyard fences--she examines our assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the demands of capitalism. Described by the New York Times as a writer who "advances from all sides, like a chess player," Biss offers an uncommonly immersive and deeply revealing new portrait of work and luxury, of accumulation and consumption, of the value of time and how we spend it. Ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokemon, Biss asks, of both herself and her class, "In what have we invested?"

Georgia says: Short essays about the author’s relationship with things and money, and about the value system we embrace when we acquire possessions. Humorous. This would make a great discussion group book. Winner of the 2021 Chautauqua Prize.


How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

Bittman, Mark
$35.00

Scott says: Straight ahead delicious recipes without a whiff of today's "foodie" foolishness or fashion. Bittman is a widely celebrated writer on food, culture and policy.

The ultimate guide to meatless meals, completely updated and better than ever.

Ten years ago, this breakthrough cookbook made vegetarian cooking accessible to everyone. Today, the issues surrounding a plant-based diet—health, sustainability, and ethics—continue to resonate with more and more Americans, whether or not they’re fully vegetarian. This new edition has been completely reviewed and revised to stay relevant to today’s cooks: New recipes include more vegan options and a brand-new chapter on smoothies, teas, and more. Charts, variations, and other key information have been updated. And, new for this edition, the recipes are showcased in bright full-color photos throughout. With these photos and a host of recipes destined to become new favorites, this already classic vegetarian cookbook will continue to be more indispensable than ever.

Farmhouse

Farmhouse

Blackall, Sophie
$18.99
Two-time Caldecott Medalist Sophie Blackall invites readers to peek through windows that shine like real glass on this lavish book's cover, and explore the dollhouse-like world of a beloved farmhouse where twelve children were born and raised.

Over a hill, at the end of a road, by a glittering stream that twists and turns stands a farmhouse.

Step inside the dollhouse-like interior of Farmhouse and relish in the daily life of the family that lives there, rendered in impeccable, thrilling detail. Based on a real family and an actual farmhouse where Sophie salvaged facts and artifacts for the making of this spectacular work, page after page bursts with luminous detail and joy. Join the award-winning, best-selling Sophie Blackall as she takes readers on an enchanting visit to a farmhouse across time, to a place that echoes with stories.

Bryn says: These illustrations are intricately layered, "in the way that stories become as they get retold over the years," creating a texture that's mesmerizing to kids and adults alike. This book will make you feel warm and nostalgic, like "home" should.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

Blitzer, Jonathan
$21.00

A National Bestseller - Nominated for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction - One of Barack Obama's Summer Reading List Picks - Named a Best Book of 2024 (So Far) by New York Times

 

"What an incredibly thorough documentation of the causes of the immigration crisis, the discussions that have been going on through multiple administrations." --Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

 

"Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is sure to take its place as one of the definitive accounts of the U.S. and Central American immigration puzzle. . . . Hopefully, those with the power to change things will listen." --Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post

 

An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate, by New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer

 

Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. An overwhelming share of them come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, although many migrants come from farther away. Some are fleeing persecution, others crime or hunger. Very often it will not be their first attempt to cross. They may have already been deported from the United States, but it remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. Their homes have become uninhabitable. They will take their chances.

 

This vast and unremitting crisis did not spring up overnight. Indeed, as Blitzer dramatizes with forensic, unprecedented reporting, it is the result of decades of misguided policy and sweeping corruption. Brilliantly weaving the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists, government officials, and the politicians responsible for the country's tragically tangled immigration policy, Blitzer reveals the full, layered picture for the first time.

 

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is an odyssey of struggle and resilience. With astonishing nuance and detail, Blitzer tells an epic story about the people whose lives ebb and flow across the border, and in doing so, he delves into the heart of American life itself. This vital and remarkable story has shaped the nation's turbulent politics and culture in countless ways--and will almost certainly determine its future.

Scott says: A thorough and compelling account of how the current immigration crisis has roots in US imperialism in Mexico, Central and South America.

By Night in Chile

By Night in Chile

Bolano, Roberto
$16.00

"Extraordinary . . . [Bolaño's] greatest work." --James Wood, The New York Times

The book that catapulted Roberto Bolaño into international literary stardom, By Night in Chile is the final testimony of Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix--Chilean priest and member of Opus Dei, eminent literary critic and failed poet--as he is haunted by a shadowy figure from his past. In Urrutia's feverish last hours, a deluge of memories pours from him: of hobnobbing with Santiago's most unctuous literati; of undertaking a mission to save Europe's decaying cathedrals from existential threat by pigeon excrement; of retreating into Greco-Roman poetry during the darkest chapter of modern Chilean history; of tutoring Augusto Pinochet in Marxist theory, so that the General may better understand his enemies. Throughout he insists, with fracturing conviction, that he was always on the right side of history. A novel about high art and fascism, silence and complicity, and, ultimately, the weight of damnation, Roberto Bolaño's By Night in Chile is a deep-cutting satire and a work of devastating moral insight.

Ben says: Part history lesson, part confession. A single unbroken paragraph that tells the story of Pinochet's rise to power as well as a profound treatise on the failure of art.

Savage Detectives

Savage Detectives

Bolano, Roberto
$23.00

Ben says: A road novel about both the end and beginning of literature. Dazzling. One of the true giants of Latin literature.

"Roberto Bolaño's masterpiece is an utterly unique achievement--a modern epic rich in character and event. . . . [He is] the most important writer to emerge from Latin America since García Márquez."
--The San Francisco Chronicle
In this dazzling novel, the book that established Robert Bolaño's international reputation, he tells the story of two modern-day Quixotes--the last survivors of an underground literary movement, perhaps of literature itself--on a tragicomic quest through their darkening, entropic world.
Profiles in Ignorance

Profiles in Ignorance

Borowitz, Andy
$28.99
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER *WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER *

Andy Borowitz, "one of the funniest people in America" (CBS Sunday Morning), brilliantly "chronicles our embrace of anti-intellectualism" (Walter Isaacson) in American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, to its apotheosis in Donald J. Trump.

Andy Borowitz has been called a "Swiftian satirist" (The Wall Street Journal) and "one of the country's finest satirists" (The New York Times). Millions of fans and New Yorker readers enjoy his satirical news column "The Borowitz Report." Now, in Profiles in Ignorance, he delivers "a wittily alarming polemic that tracks the evolution of American politics from grounds for gravitas to festival of idiocy" (The New York Times).

Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan's first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the US has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying. In addition to Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin, and Trump, Borowitz covers a host of congresspersons, senators, and governors who have helped lower the bar over the past five decades.

Profiles in Ignorance aims to make us both laugh and cry: laugh at the idiotic antics of these public figures, and cry at the cataclysms these icons of ignorance have caused. But most importantly, the book delivers a call to action and a cause for optimism: History doesn't move in a straight line, and we can change course if we act now.

Name of This Book Is Secret -- Secret Series 1

Name of This Book Is Secret -- Secret Series 1

Bosch, Pseudonymous; Ford, Gil
$9.99
Read the series that's sold more than 2 million copies--if you dare!

Warning: this description has not been authorized by Pseudonymous Bosch. As much as he'd love to sing the praises of his book (he is very vain), he wouldn't want you to hear about his brave 11-year old heroes, Cass and Max-Ernest. Or about how a mysterious box of vials, the Symphony of Smells, sends them on the trail of a magician who has vanished under strange (and stinky) circumstances. And he certainly wouldn't want you to know about the hair-raising adventures that follow and the nefarious villains they face. You see, not only is the name of this book secret, the story inside is, too. For it concerns a secret. A Big Secret.

Lemon

Lemon

Boyd, S E
$27.00
"[T]his poised and playful debut novel is a sly satire on foodie culture and the modern hype machine. . . . As tart as 'artisanal citrus, ' as sharp as a chef's knife, The Lemon is both a gleeful foodie sendup and an incisive takedown of the commercial exploitation of just about everything."
--The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

Named a Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2022 by Entertainment Weekly - Vogue - AARP the Magazine - The AV Club - Parade - Eater - New York Post - LitHub - Publishers Lunch - and more!

Set in the intersecting worlds of fine dining, Hollywood, and the media, a darkly hilarious and ultimately affecting story about the underside of success and fame, and our ongoing complicity in devouring our cultural heroes.

While filming on location in Belfast, Northern Ireland, John Doe, the universally adored host of the culinary travel show Last Call, is found dead in a hotel room in an apparent suicide. As the news of his untimely demise breaks stateside, a group of friends, fixers, hustlers, and opportunists vie to seize control of the narrative: Doe's chess-master of an agent Nia, ready to call in every favor she is owed to preserve his legacy; down-on-her-luck journalist Katie, who fabricates a story about Doe to save her job at a failing website; and world-famous chef Paolo Cabrini, Doe's closest friend and confidant, who finds himself entangled with a deranged Belfast hotel worker whose lurid secret might just take them all down.

Bolstered by the authors' insider knowledge of high-end restaurants and low-end media, The Lemon delivers a raucous examination of our culture with deliciously cutting prose, crackling dialogue, and an unpredictable plot that will keep you riveted to the last page.

Nora says: A very smart, well-written satire—a pleasure to read, especially in view of the trifurcated authorship, under the pseudonym S. E. Boyd. The world of celebrity chefs and internet influencer stardom is sent up in the most knowing, comical, and loving way. This is an affectionate romp through the hospitality industry in the digital age by writers who clearly know and love this crazy world.

Loved and Missed

Loved and Missed

Boyt, Susie
$17.95
With her daughter in the throes of drug addiction, a mother takes over the care of her granddaughter--and is transformed by the bond that forms between them--in this warm, sharp-witted, and psychologically acute story of familial love by a praised British novelist.

Ruth is a woman who believes in and despairs of the curative power of love. Her daughter, Eleanor, who is addicted to drugs, has just had a baby, Lily. Ruth adjusts herself in ways large and small to give to Eleanor what she thinks she may need--nourishment, distance, affection--but all her gifts fall short. After someone dies of an overdose in Eleanor's apartment, Ruth hands her daughter an envelope of cash and takes Lily home with her, and Lily, as she grows, proves a compensation for all of Ruth's past defeats and disappointment. Love without fear is a new feeling for her, almost unrecognizable. Will it last?

Love and Missed is a whip-smart, incisive, and mordantly witty novel about love's gains and missteps. British writer Susie Boyt's seventh novel, and the first to be published in the United States, is a triumph.

Andrea says: I expected this to be a wrenching story, but it is much more poignant than painful. A quick, moving, and thoughtful journey into the love of mothers and daughters, the value of friends, and ties that bind and unbind.