As communists take over Vietnam, Catholic farmers find themselves threatened. By the thousands they become refugees and attempt to flee persecution. This is one family's four-decade long story as they make attempts to live free.

A powerful memoir of resilience, friendship, family, and food from the acclaimed chefs behind the award-winning Hy Vong Vietnamese restaurant in Miami. Through powerful narrative, archival imagery, and 20 Vietnamese recipes that mirror their story, Mango & Peppercorns is a unique contribution to culinary literature. In 1975, after narrowly escaping the fall of Saigon, pregnant refugee and gifted cook Tung Nguyen ended up in the Miami home of Kathy Manning, a graduate student and waitress who was taking in displaced Vietnamese refugees. This serendipitous meeting evolved into a decades-long partnership, one that eventually turned strangers into family and a tiny, no-frills eatery into one of the most lauded restaurants in the country. Tung's fierce practicality often clashed with Kathy's free-spirited nature, but over time, they found a harmony in their contrasts—a harmony embodied in the restaurant's signature mango and peppercorns sauce. • IMPORTANT, UNIVERSAL STORY: An inspiring memoir peppered with recipes, it is a riveting read that will appeal to fans of Roy Choi, Ed Lee, Ruth Reichl, and Kwame Onwuachi. • TIMELY TOPIC: This real-life American dream is a welcome reminder of our country's longstanding tradition of welcoming refugees and immigrants. This book adds a touchpoint to that larger conversation, resonating beyond the bookshelf. • INVENTIVE COOKBOOK: This book is taking genre-bending a step further, focusing on the story first and foremost with 20 complementary recipes. Perfect for: • Fans of culinary nonfiction • Fans of Ruth Reichl, Roy Choi, Kwame Onwuachi, and Anya Von Bremzen • Home cooks who are interested in Asian food and cooking

Narrative nonfiction account of a Vietnamese family as they try to escape the expanding communist regime of Ho Chi Minh.

“Wonderfully written…Mr. Owen writes about water, but in these polarized times the lessons he shares spill into other arenas. The world of water rights and wrongs along the Colorado River offers hope for other problems.” —Wall Street Journal An eye-opening account of where our water comes from and where it all goes. The Colorado River is an essential resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado’s headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.–Mexico border where the river runs dry. Water problems in the western United States can seem tantalizingly easy to solve: just turn off the fountains at the Bellagio, stop selling hay to China, ban golf, cut down the almond trees, and kill all the lawyers. But a closer look reveals a vast man-made ecosystem that is far more complex and more interesting than the headlines let on. The story Owen tells in Where the Water Goes is crucial to our future: how a patchwork of engineering marvels, byzantine legal agreements, aging infrastructure, and neighborly cooperation enables life to flourish in the desert—and the disastrous consequences we face when any part of this tenuous system fails.

Includes statistics.

This is the saga of one immigrant's trials, tribulations and triumphs. He is only a teenager when he arrives on the shores of New York, almost penniless, cardboard suitcase in hand. He is alone, has no friends, speaks no English and has no job. What he does have is boundless optimism. He gets involved with Cuban exiles training for the Bay of Pigs invasion. The mob offers him a job they think he can't refuse. The Army trains him to be a killing machine. He drinks, he gambles and he follows the dictates of his raging hormones. He continuously tries to adapt himself to his new surroundings wherever and whatever they may be. Every time he thinks he is no longer a stranger he finds himself confounded by a new twist in his efforts to assimilate.

Scarred from Vietnam, Steve is invited to a wedding in Mexico where he meets Miracle, a young Mexican woman who is asked to be his guide. After a series of misunderstandings they come to care deeply for each other, this spark evolves into the flame of love. The tragedies that have paralelled their lives have led them to a better understanding of each other. The compassion that they have shown for others in the jungles of Mexico kindled the flame of love for each other.