Give us this day "The Best Bread Ever" and give us Charles van Over to show us the way to baking it at home, using a food processor. I must admit that I've been a fan and consumer of Charlie's bread for over 20 years, first becoming addicted when he baked in the back of a funky local restaurant near my house in Connecticut, and I've continued to sample his superb bread, baguettes and beyond, ever since. Charlie moved on to much bigger and better things, but he never stopped experimenting with bread. During the last eight years Charlie has perfected his food processor technique, and I can attest to the fact that it does produce the best bread ever, and now, through the wonder of the printed word, so can you.
More admissions here -- I suffer, as do many, from "fear of breadbaking." And if ever there was a cure, this is it. Charlie tells you exactly what you need to know about ingredients, equipment, including some very reassuring solutions to food processor problems and terms and techniques, these sprinkled with lots of helpful photos. Then comes the most important chapter of all -- the step-by-step guide to mixing dough in the food processor. It's revolutionary, and Comrade Charlie is our maximum leader. In just 45 seconds the dough is mixed, no kneading needed, no flour settling into the nooks and crannies of your kitchen. It rises and rests, you follow the carefully explained directions for forming the dough into baguettes (if self doubt creeps up on you, just flip back to the "techniques" section for added support), proof, bake. You've joined the revolution and made "The Best Bread Ever."
Over 70 recipes follow, sweet, savory, homey, exotic, earthy and elegant. Perhaps the best thing since sliced bread, "The Best Bread Ever" is an ideal gift to give yourself or someone else this holiday season.
-- Sybil Pratt
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Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was a lawyer and insurance company executive and one of the greatest twentieth century American poets. Stevens' "Collected Poetry and Prose," edited by noted scholars Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson, brings together for the first time his complete volumes of poetry as they were originally published as well as previously uncollected poetry, his plays and essays, and selections from his letters, journals and notebooks. Recipient of the major poetry awards, Stevens explored the importance of the imagination in human affairs with keen intelligence and stylistic brilliance. The editors include a detailed chronology of his life and work. To have all of this in one volume helps us as never before to understand and appreciate Stevens' achievement.
-- Roger Bishop
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Between 1935 and 1939, working for the Federal Art Project, Berenice Abbott photographed a city growing and changing with all the fervor that still lends New York its mythic stature. Bonnie Yochelson, who was Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Musem of the City of New York, created "Berenice Abbott: Changing New York" out of the archives of that institution.
Yochelson sets the stage with a long and vivid introduction. Then come the photographs -- hundreds of beautiful prints of New York that, despite the Depression, radiate the allure that has always made it seem like the true capital of America.
The photographs range from the towers of the financial district seen through the rigging of a ship to office workers scurrying at Fifth Avenue and 44th, from a gasoline station in the Bronx to the view under the Second Avenue El. Families sit on stoops in Brooklyn; bankers tool toward Wall Street. There are extensive historical notes in the back.
This book is for lovers of photography, of architecture, of New York, of history. And it's for anyone who has walked the streets of New York and thought, "This place is half Gomorrah and half Disneyland. It's exactly how a city should be."
-- Michael Sims
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"If I go to Mississippi," Martin Dain asked his friends, "am I going to be able to show this country? Will I be able to find things that will evoke a great author?"
Well, Dain went to Mississippi (the first time in 1961), and he took pictures, and he does indeed beautifully evoke the settings, the characters, even sometimes the tone, of Faulkner's writings in his book "Faulkner's World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain." The whole production is handsomely introduced by novelist Larry Brown, with his own recollections of the place and time, and edited by Tom Rankin.
Some of the photos appeared in the 1964 book "Faulkner's County: Yoknapatawpha." Bowed black women drag long white bags behind them as they gather cotton boll by boll. Prisoners in striped uniforms walk the fields behind mule teams. A grizzled old white man holds a hound pup in hands turned as rough as work gloves by a lifetime of hard labor. There are hog-killings and horse-shoeings. Chickens wander the packed dirt yards, and lost-looking children stare at the camera.
Dain's work is a fine example of how the arts speak across all boundaries. He was born in Boston, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Yet from youth he was drawn to the writings of William Faulkner. Even without his comments, his photos demonstrate why.
-- Michael Sims
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A historian, novelist and screenwriter, George MacDonald Fraser has an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject. "The Hollywood History of the World" seems to include all the major (and many minor) costume dramas between "The Ten Commandments" and "Braveheart." They range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from Peter Ustinov as an oily Nero to Boris Karloff as a dyspeptic Seneca chief.
The scope of Fraser's book is witty and accessible, stuffed with behind-the-scene stories and comparisons with historical sources. It features dozens of illustrations of historical figures matched with photographs of the actors who portrayed them. Sometimes the casting seems inspired -- Roddy McDowell as the young Augustus Caesar, for example.
Part of the fun is identifying the background characters. Is that John Garfield as an unconvincingly ragged sailor? Was that old workhorse Henry Wilcoxon in every film ever made? Does the author have a thing for Sabu?
Taste is famously subjective, and Fraser is no more consistent than you or I would be. He has the good sense to think Errol Flynn's "Robin Hood" a masterpiece of its kind, but he is blind to the merits of "The Madness of King George." But throughout, his enthusiasm for his subject is contagious.
-- Michael Sims
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Where would you quickly find the difference between a scalene and an obtuse triangle? How do the tenets of the Lutherans and Methodists differ? What are the top sororities and fraternities? How can you forecast the weather from the signs around you? How do you nurture your 401(K)? What do you need to know to choose a tennis racket? How do you get a passport?Believe it or not, all these answers -- and literally hundreds more -- can be found in a single amazing 788-page paperback almanac, "The Practical Guide to Practically Everything". The 1998 edition also happens to be amusing. A roundup of cosmetic surgeries, detailing risks and side effects and recovery time, is entitled "The Next Best Thing to Being Real." In a list of walking trails across the country, one is described as "no wider than a fat guy." There is even, heaven help us, a table of Roman numerals.
Authors Peter Bernstein and Christopher Ma weren't kidding when they titled their book.
-- Michael Sims
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Sometimes Ralph Steadman's artwork seems the result of some unnatural union between one of the savage caricaturists of the past -- Daumier, say, or Hogarth -- and an elegant Victorian traveling painter, perhaps Edward Lear. The combination is unnerving and wholly original.Steadman's drawings have verve and imagination to spare, and his writing voice is just as strong-lined and ink-splattered. In fact, he can sound like Tom Robbins on mescaline. Wait -- that's how Tom Robbins sounds. Okay, he sounds like Ralph Steadman on whisky.
His new book, "Still Life with Bottle: Whisky According to Ralph Steadman", is a tribute to and an exploration of Scottish whisky, hilariously weaving cultural history and travelogue. He begins in pre-history, or "Prewhiskery" as he calls it, and finds his way even to George Dickel and the stills of Tennessee.
Along the way we encounter both cartoons that resemble the therapeautic tantrums of an inmate -- a brilliant inmate -- and delicate paintings of picturesque villages. Never before has multiple personality disorder been this entertaining. And along the way, Steadman manages to hint that Scottish whisky just may be the highest achievement of civilization.
-- Michael Sims
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Betty Oppenheimer's "Gifts for Herb Lovers" is the perfect book for those who remember when gift-giving involved creating useful gifts meant to delight and comfort.This little book has 50 herb-related, easy-to-make projects you'll enjoy doing on those seemingly endless, winter afternoons. Here's a sample of what you can make: an herb drying rack, scented herbal soaps and herbal candles, dream pillows, herb-printed note cards and handmade paper.
The "Techniques" chapter offers instructions for buying and drying herbs, making infusions, potpourri, paints and ink, stenciliing and nature printing. All projects are accompanied by pictures and clear, step-by-step instructions.
Oppenheimer's gift ideas simplify gift-giving and replace the price tag with a thoughtful, creative gift from the heart.
-- Pat Regel
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In 750 two-column pages, the "Oxford Family Encyclopedia" answers practically any question you can think of: How does the telephone work? What was the progress of the Black Death across Asia and Europe? How are the feet of mammals different and similar? How do spiders go about spinning webs? What is the history of Burundi?
The format is clear and inviting, the typefaces crisp, the cross-referencing extensive but unobstrusive. Lit up with full-color photographs and paintings and diagrams, every single page rewards the researcher and captures the browser. In the back are tables ranging from specific gravities to popes since the year 1000. Even the endpapers were not ignored; they are two different full-color world maps.
You don't have to have school-age children around the house to appreciate this book. All you have to have is curiosity, which this lovely one-volume resource is designed to both whet and satisfy.
-- Michael Sims
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©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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