In An Extravagant Hunger, time slows and is relished, and the turning points and casual strolls of M.F.K. Fisher's life are unwrapped and savored. From the Berengaria that washed her across the sea to France in 1929, to Le Paquis, the Swiss estate that later provided a backdrop for some of the most idyllic and fleeting moments of her life, the stories of Fisher's love for food and her love for family and men are meticulously researched and exquisitely captured in this book. Exploring Fisher's lonely and formative time in Europe with her first husband; her subsequent divorce and re–marriage to her creative sparkplug, Dillwyn Parrish, and his tragic suicide; and the child she carried from an unnamed father, the story of M.F.K. Fisher's life becomes as vibrant and passionate as her prolific words on wine and cuisine. Letters and journal entries piece together a dramatic life, but An Extravagant Hunger steps further, bridging the gaps between personal notes and her public persona, filling in the silences by offering an engaging and unprecedented depth of intuitive commentary. With a passion of her own, Anne Zimmerman is the careful witness, lingering beside M.F.K. Fisher through her most dramatic and productive years.

That rosy tomato perched on your plate in December is at the end of a great journey—not just over land and sea, but across a vast and varied cultural history. This is the territory charted in Fresh. Opening the door of an ordinary refrigerator, it tells the curious story of the quality stored inside: freshness. We want fresh foods to keep us healthy, and to connect us to nature and community. We also want them convenient, pretty, and cheap. Fresh traces our paradoxical hunger to its roots in the rise of mass consumption, when freshness seemed both proof of and an antidote to progress. Susanne Freidberg begins with refrigeration, a trend as controversial at the turn of the twentieth century as genetically modified crops are today. Consumers blamed cold storage for high prices and rotten eggs but, ultimately, aggressive marketing, advances in technology, and new ideas about health and hygiene overcame this distrust. Freidberg then takes six common foods from the refrigerator to discover what each has to say about our notions of freshness. Fruit, for instance, shows why beauty trumped taste at a surprisingly early date. In the case of fish, we see how the value of a living, quivering catch has ironically hastened the death of species. And of all supermarket staples, why has milk remained the most stubbornly local? Local livelihoods; global trade; the politics of taste, community, and environmental change: all enter into this lively, surprising, yet sobering tale about the nature and cost of our hunger for freshness.

A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations “Delicious . . . A banquet of anecdote that brings history to life with intimacy, candor, and glorious color.”—NPR’s All Things Considered Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sang odes to Lenin, black-marketeered Juicy Fruit gum at school, watched her father brew moonshine, and, like most Soviet citizens, longed for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, naively joyous, and melancholy—and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return. Now Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, Anya and her mother decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience. Through these meals, and through the tales of three generations of her family, Anya tells the intimate yet epic story of life in the USSR. Wildly inventive and slyly witty, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Christian Science Monitor, Publishers Weekly

An original study of exile, told through the biography of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig By the 1930s, Stefan Zweig had become the most widely translated living author in the world. His novels, short stories, and biographies were so compelling that they became instant best sellers. Zweig was also an intellectual and a lover of all the arts, high and low. Yet after Hitler’s rise to power, this celebrated writer who had dedicated so much energy to promoting international humanism plummeted, in a matter of a few years, into an increasingly isolated exile—from London to Bath to New York City, then Ossining, Rio, and finally Petrópolis—where, in 1942, in a cramped bungalow, he killed himself. The Impossible Exile tells the tragic story of Zweig’s extraordinary rise and fall while it also depicts, with great acumen, the gulf between the world of ideas in Europe and in America, and the consuming struggle of those forced to forsake one for the other. It also reveals how Zweig embodied, through his work, thoughts, and behavior, the end of an era—the implosion of Europe as an ideal of Western civilization.

"Here's some advice. Stay alive." --Haymitch Abernathy When it comes to The Hunger Games, staying alive means finding food any way possible. Katniss and Gale hunt live game, Peeta's family survives on the bread they make, and the inhabitants of the Seam work twelve-hour days for a few handfuls of grain--all while the residents of the Capitol gorge themselves on delicacies and desserts to the heart's desire. For the first time, you will be able to create delicious recipes from the humble District 12 to the extravagant Capital, including: French Bread from the Mellark Family Bakery Katniss's Favorite Lamb Stew with Dried Plums Rue's Roasted Parsnips Gale's Bone-Pickin' Big Game Soup Capitol-Grade Dark Chocolate Cake If you're starving for more from Katniss, Peeta, and Gale, this cookbook is sure to whet your appetite!

A very wide-ranging anthology which goes beyond the traditional limits of collections of food writing: it not only celebrates wonderful meals in novels, diaries and biobraphies, but addresses some of the more controversial and political aspects of food as well. The chapter headings include: (anorexia, hunger strikers); 'Plenty' (from Lucullus to Mrs Beeton); 'Punishment (force-feeding); 'Ostentation' (politica-lly extravagant meals); 'Sex' (food before, during and aftyer sex); 'Dislikes' (school food; foreign food) and 'Passions' (wonderful food) Joan Smith is a celebrated novelist and journalist who has a healthily obsessive attitude towards food - she will write a long introduction to the book.

“If you decide to go through life without cooking you are missing something very, very special. You are losing out on one of the greatest pleasures you can have with your clothes on.” — Nigel Slater A chance comment spurred the heralded Observer columnist and wildly popular cookbook author Nigel Slater to write Appetite. A reader asked “If you don’t give me exact amounts in a recipe, then how will I know if it is right?” Slater realized the reader had so little confidence in his own cooking that he didn’t know what he liked unless he was told. Appetite is not about getting it right or wrong; it is about liking what you cook. To help the everyday cook achieve culinary independence, Slater supplies the basics of relaxed, unpretentious, hearty cooking, written with his trademark humour and candour. Slater doesn’t believe in replicating restaurant-style theatricality to impress guests -- he simply loves food, and his love is evident on every page. Slater covers the philosophies of cooking, the basics to have on hand, and detailed descriptions of necessary equipment and ingredients. He tells you which wok to buy (the cheap one), and why it can pay to flirt with the fishmonger. There are sections on seasoning, a good long list of foods that pair well, and a large collection of recipes for soup, pasta, rice, vegetables, fish, meat, pastry and desserts. These are straightforward, easy-to-make dishes adapted for the North American cook -- every one a springboard to something new, different and delicious. And with full-colour photography throughout the book, Appetite is a feast for the eyes as well as the palate.