From 1974 to 1976, Langdon Clay (born 1949) photographed the cars he encountered while wandering the streets of New York City and nearby Hoboken, New Jersey, at night. Shot in Kodachrome with a Leica and deftly lit with then-new sodium vapor lights, the pictures feature a distinct array of makes and models set against the gritty details of their surrounding urban and architectural environments, and occasionally the ghostly presence of people. "I experienced a conversion of sorts in making a switch from the 'decisive moment' of black and white to the marvel of color, a world I was waking up to every day," Clay writes of this work. "At the time it seemed like an obvious and natural transition. What was less obvious was how to reflect my world of New York City in color ... I discovered that night was its own color and I fell for it." Langdon Claywas born in New York City in 1949. He grew up in New Jersey and Vermont and attended school in New Hampshire and Boston. Clay moved to New York in 1971 and spent the next sixteen years photographing there, around the country and in Europe for various magazines and books. In 1987 he moved to Mississippi where he has since lived with his wife, photographer Maude Schuyler Clay, and their three children.

The Mississippi Delta is a complicated and fascinating place. Part travel guide, part cookbook, and part photo essay, Eat Drink Delta by veteran food journalist Susan Puckett (with photographs by Delta resident Langdon Clay) reveals a region shaped by slavery, civil rights, amazing wealth, abject deprivation, the Civil War, a flood of biblical proportions, and—above all—an overarching urge to get down and party with a full table and an open bar. There’s more to Delta dining than southern standards. Puckett uncovers the stories behind convenience stores where dill pickles marinate in Kool-Aid and diners where tabouli appears on plates with fried chicken. She celebrates the region’s hot tamale makers who follow the time-honored techniques that inspired many a blues lyric. And she introduces us to a new crop of Delta chefs who brine chicken in sweet tea and top stone-ground Mississippi grits with local pond-raised prawns and tomato confit. The guide also provides a taste of events such as Belzoni’s World Catfish Festival and Tunica’s Wild Game Cook-Off and offers dozens of tested recipes, including the Memphis barbecue pizza beloved by Elvis and a lemon ice-box pie inspired by Tennessee Williams. To William Faulkner’s suggestion, “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi,” Susan Puckett adds this advice: Go to the Delta with an open mind and an empty stomach. Make your way southward in a journey measured in meals, not miles.

The kitchen of the title is in a 17th-century chateau called Le Fey, high on a hill in Burgundy. From this vantage point, Anne Willan -- long known as an authority on French regional cuisine, on food history, and on classic French cooking -- has written a personal book, elegantly interweaving chapters on her life in the chateau with journeys out into the surrounding landscape. She examines the work of the people of Chateau du Fey and its surrounding quarters: the gardeners, farmers, vintners, and restaurateurs who live and breathe French cuisine, and who contribute to the character and flavors of the Burgundian table. Foremost in the cast of characters in Anne Willan From My Chateau Kitchen is M. Milbert, gardien and gardener, who will pick no vegetable before its time. But there is also Claude the water man, who looks after pipes and plumbing for both village and chateau, and who figures prominently in the group of local hunters who follow the age-old rules of la chasse. We are introduced to M. Simon, the blacksmith with a network of cellars under a nearby cathedral, where he makes ratafia. And M. Haumonte teaches traditional bread and croissant making using the chateau's wood-fired oven. There is the lady from Morvan who makes 500 varieties of jam, the beekeeper, and the father and son with the traveling cider press. Anne Willan takes us through the countryside, to markets in Sens, to the makers of mustard and spice bread in Dijon, to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, where Leslie Caron presides over an establishment serving Burgundian fare, and to Joigny, where Lorain father and son reign in 3-star splendor. Anne has chosen to share recipes for the dishes she cooks and eats at home, including such classics as Leek Quiche, Oeufs en Meurette, and Jambon Chablisien. There are also recipes that cope with the garden's staggering bounty, such as Spiced Red Currant Jelly and Gratin of Summer Vegetables in Herb Pesto. Other recipes are brought by the chefs who cook at the La Varenne school -- including Snail and Mushroom Ravioli with Parsley Sauce and Dried Fig and Marc Ice Cream. In almost 300 color photographs and with more than 160 recipes, Anne Willan renders an intimate appreciation of both the food and the culture of Burgundy. As this beautiful and personal book proves, Anne Willan has succeeded marvelously in her chosen (and enviable) task of exploring, understanding, and teaching the art of French cuisine as it manifests itself in one of France's most food-oriented provinces. Which just happens to be her back -- and front -- yard.

Maude Schuyler Clay started her color portrait series Mississippi History in 1975 when she acquired her first Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex camera. At the time, she was living and working in New York and paying frequent visits to her native Mississippi Delta, whose landscape and people continued to inspire her. Over the next 25 years, the project, which began as The Mississippians, evolved in part as an homage to Julia Margaret Cameron, a definitive pioneer of the art of photography. Cameron lived in Victorian England and began her photographic experiments in 1863. Clay's expressive, allegorical portraits of her friends, family and other Mississippians, as well as her artful approach to capturing the essence of light, are the driving forces behind her recollection of moments of family life in Mississippi in the 1980s and 90s.

“A beautifully written portrait of the people who collect and distribute wild mushrooms . . . food and nature writing at its finest.”—Eugenia Bone, author of Mycophilia “A rollicking narrative . . . Cook [delivers] vivid and cinematic scenes on every page.”—The Wall Street Journal In the dark corners of America’s forests grow culinary treasures. Chefs pay top dollar to showcase these elusive and enchanting ingredients on their menus. Whether dressing up a filet mignon with smoky morels or shaving luxurious white truffles over pasta, the most elegant restaurants across the country now feature one of nature’s last truly wild foods: the uncultivated, uncontrollable mushroom. The mushroom hunters, by contrast, are a rough lot. They live in the wilderness and move with the seasons. Motivated by Gold Rush desires, they haul improbable quantities of fungi from the woods for cash. Langdon Cook embeds himself in this shadowy subculture, reporting from both rural fringes and big-city eateries with the flair of a novelist, uncovering along the way what might be the last gasp of frontier-style capitalism. Meet Doug, an ex-logger and crabber—now an itinerant mushroom picker trying to pay his bills and stay out of trouble; Jeremy, a former cook turned wild-food entrepreneur, crisscrossing the continent to build a business amid cutthroat competition; their friend Matt, an up-and-coming chef whose kitchen alchemy is turning heads; and the woman who inspires them all. Rich with the science and lore of edible fungi—from seductive chanterelles to exotic porcini—The Mushroom Hunters is equal parts gonzo travelogue and culinary history lesson, a fast-paced, character-driven tour through a world that is by turns secretive, dangerous, and quintessentially American.

Lucas McCarty lives in the Mississippi Delta. He is the only white congregant in the African-American Trinity House of Prayer Holiness church. Lucas is bereft of the ability to speak due to cerebral palsy, yet he sings there in the church choir. Thus is the subject of Year of Our Lord, a portrait of courage, acceptance and grace, rendered in the lyrical prose of T.R. Pearson and the haunting photographs of Langdon Clay. Year of Our Lord is a visual journey, exploring one of the poorest parts of the American South, a place that economic progress has left behind. And it is a spiritual journey, a revelation of a community that has replaced the hope for earthly prosperity with an abundance of faith in God and the life beyond. The Delta¿s is a culture that can look upon Lucas and say, ¿God don¿t make mistakes.¿ It is a place that in the face of abject poverty can proclaim, life offers ¿too much joy!¿ Year of Our Lord, then, is an opportunity to see into another¿s world, and to embrace the best of it.