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  All the Wild Hungers - A Season...

  Karen Babine

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  A “lovely” memoir of caring for a mother with cancer, reflecting on our appetites for food and for life (Minneapolis Star Tribune). When her mother is diagnosed with a rare cancer, Karen Babine—cook, collector of vintage cast iron, and fiercely devoted daughter, sister, and aunt—can’t help but wonder: feed a fever, starve a cold, but what do we do for cancer? And so she commits to preparing her mother anything she will eat, a vegetarian diving into the unfamiliar world of bone broth and pot roast.   In this series of mini-essays, Babine ponders the intimate connections between food, family, and illness. As she notes that her sister’s unborn baby is the size of lemon while her mother’s tumor is the size of a cabbage, she reflects on what draws us toward food metaphors to describe disease. What is the power of language, of naming, in a medical culture where patients are too often made invisible? How do we seek meaning where none is to be found—and can we create it from scratch? And how, Babine asks as she bakes cookies with her small niece and nephew, does a family create its own food culture across generations?   Generous and bittersweet, All the Wild Hungers is an affecting chronicle of one family’s experience of illness and of a writer's culinary attempt to make sense of the inexplicable.   “[Babine] continues to navigate her way through extraordinary challenges with ordinary comforts, finding poetry in the everyday. Reading this quiet book should provide the sort of balm for those in similar circumstances that writing it must have for the author.”―Kirkus Reviews   “Profound…Anyone who has experienced a family member’s struggle with cancer will be stabbed by recognition throughout this book…In the end, the overriding hunger referred to in this lovely book’s title is the hunger for life.”―Minneapolis Star Tribune

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  The Artistry in Hidden Talents -...

  Mel Rusnov

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  Mel Rusnov describes the delight of discovering "The Artistry of Hidden Talents", especially music, in people otherwise defined by their careers, for NPR's This I Believe series.  
  This I Believe is a National Public Radio program that features Americans, from the famous to the unknown, completing the thought that begins with the series title. The pieces that make up the program compel listeners to re-think not only what and how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others. 
  Featuring a star-studded list of contributors that includes John McCain, Isabel Allende, and Colin Powell, as well as pieces from the original 1950's series including Helen Keller and Jackie Robinson, the This I Believe book collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer, a woman who sells yellow pages advertising in Fort Worth, TX and a man who serves on the state of Rhode Island's parole board. The result is a stirring, funny and always provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of Americans whose beliefs, and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them, reveal the American spirit at its best.

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  A Letter to a Hindu

  Leo Tolstoy

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  A Letter to a Hindu was written in 1908 by Leo Tolstoy to Tarak Nath Das, an Indian revolutionary and internationalist scholar. The letter was translated and reprinted by Mohandas Gandhi, who used the ideas of love revealed through non-violent resistance in his own ideological teachings. Non-violent resistance was a principle of Tolstoy's christian belief.

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  The Din in the Head - Essays

  Cynthia Ozick

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  A collection of essays on the joys of great literature from the New York Times–bestselling author and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.   One of America’s foremost novelists and critics, Cynthia Ozick has won praise and provoked debate for taking on challenging literary, historical, and moral issues. Her new collection of spirited essays focuses on the essential joys of great literature, with particular emphasis on the novel. With razor-sharp wit and an inspiring joie de vivre, she investigates unexpected byways in the works of Leo Tolstoy, Saul Bellow, Helen Keller, Isaac Babel, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, and others. In a posthumous and hilariously harassing “(Unfortunate) Interview with Henry James,” Ozick’s hero is shocked by a lady reporter. In “Highbrow Blues,” and in reflections on her own early fiction, she writes intimately of “the din in our heads, that relentless inner hum,” and the curative power of literary imagination. The Din in the Head is sure to please fans of Ozick, win her new readers, and excite critical controversy and acclaim.   “Open the collection anywhere—I guarantee it—and you will feel the bite of her distinctive voice.” —Sven Birkerts, Los Angeles Times   “The passion that fills these essays is invigorating. In our age of irony and commercial pandering, we need writers like Ozick.” —Danielle Chapman, Chicago Tribune

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  England's Mistress - The...

  Kate Williams

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  Emma Hamilton was England's first superstar. She fought her way out of dire poverty to become a fashion icon, an Ambassador's wife, a confidante of both Queen Marie Antoinette and the Queen of Naples, and the mistress of Lord Nelson, England's greatest military hero. Drawing on hundreds of previously undiscovered letters, England's Mistress follows Emma's dramatic journey from the slums of Northern England to the Royal Court of Naples, and from the brothels of St. James's to the tragedy and glory of the Napoleonic wars. Muse and mother, wife and mistress, celebrity and villain, victim and survivor: Emma Hamilton was one of the most remarkable women in British history. Emma set out to make herself a star - and she succeeded beyond even her wildest dreams. By her early twenties, she was the most painted woman of her day. Her 'Attitudes', classical postures in diaphanous outfits, thrilled aristocrats and intellectuals while her innovations in fashion and dress changed the way women looked for ever. Shrewdly manipulating the media's fascination with her, Emma made herself into the most famous woman in England, desired by every man she met, adored by thousands, and, for a time, very rich. Yet, she was willing to throw it all away for the man she loved. Extensively researched but told with a novelist's flair, this is the story of one woman's fight to live on her own terms. England's Mistress captures the relentless drive, innovative style and burning passion of a true heroine.

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  Viva Mexico!

  Charles Flandrau

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  Flandrau was a rich young American with an individual sense of humour and no prejudices, except against Western uniformity. His travel book, first published in 1908, is more than a ramble among the Mexican people. Based on his brother's coffee plantation, he spent the best part of five years in a country which he describes as 'one long carelessly written but absorbing romance'. His insights into the customs and character of rural Mexicans, and expatriate gringos, apply to this day.

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