In Inventing Authenticity, Carrie Helms Tippen examines the rhetorical power of storytelling in cookbooks to fortify notions of southernness. Tippen brings to the table her ongoing hunt for recipe cards and evaluates a wealth of cookbooks with titles like Y’all Come Over and Bless Your Heart and famous cookbooks such as Sean Brock’s Heritage and Edward Lee’s Smoke and Pickles. She examines her own southern history, grounding it all in a thorough understanding of the relevant literature. The result is a deft and entertaining dive into the territory of southern cuisine—“black-eyed peas and cornbread,fried chicken and fried okra, pound cake and peach cobbler,”—and a look at and beyond southern food tropes that reveals much about tradition, identity, and the yearning for authenticity. Tippen discusses the act of cooking as a way to perform—and therefore reinforce—the identity associated with a recipe, and the complexities inherent in attempts to portray the foodways of a region marked by a sometimes distasteful history. Inventing Authenticity meets this challenge head-on, delving into problems of cultural appropriation and representations of race, thorny questions about authorship, and more. The commonplace but deceptively complex southern cookbook can sustain our sense of where we come from and who we are—or who we think we are.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "A brilliant and empathetic guide to the far corners of global capitalism." --Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing From FSGO x Logic: stories about rural China, food, and tech that reveal new truths about the globalized world In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today. From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between globalization, technology, agriculture, and commerce in unprecedented fashion. Accompanied by humorous “Sinofuturist” recipes that frame meals as they transform under new technology, Blockchain Chicken Farm is an original and probing look into innovation, connectivity, and collaboration in the digitized rural world. FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.

Those Barren Leaves is a satirical novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1925. The title is derived from the poem 'The Tables Turned' by William Wordsworth which ends with the words: Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. Stripping the pretensions of those who claim a spot among the cultural elite, it is the story of Mrs. Aldwinkle and her entourage, who are gathered in an Italian palace to relive the glories of the Renaissance. For all their supposed sophistication, they are nothing but sad and superficial individuals in the final analysis.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

George Orwell provides a vivid and unflinching portrayal of working-class life in Northern England during the 1930s. Through his own experiences and meticulous investigative reporting, Orwell exposes the harsh living conditions, poverty, and social injustices faced by coal miners and other industrial workers in the region. He documents their struggles with unemployment, poor housing, and inadequate healthcare, as well as the pervasive sense of hopelessness and despair that permeates their lives. In the second half of the The Road to Wigan Pier Orwell delves into the complexities of political ideology, as he grapples with the shortcomings of both socialism and capitalism in addressing the needs of the working class. GEORGE ORWELL was born in India in 1903 and passed away in London in 1950. As a journalist, critic, and author, he was a sharp commentator on his era and its political conditions and consequences.