Allure, tragedy and mystery surround Carl Faberge’s fabulous Easter eggs, the subject of Toby Faber’s Faberg
A nice cuppa java This springtime coffee is being celebrated in a number of different formats. Here are some of the offerings. Fortune in a Coffee Cup: Divination with Coffee Grounds (Llewellyn, $9.95, 1567186106) is ideal fodder for the novelty item shelf in a bookstore, coffee shop, or New Age store. The author has worked up a sizable semiology of meanings to the patterns of swirling leftover coffee grounds.
Apparently this practice is nothing new: This book is the culmination of a thousand years of oral tradition, and I believe the first time these secrets have appeared in print. If you see a padlock in the bottom of your coffee cup, it means you are feeling that too many decisions in your life are being made by others. But if you see a padlock in the middle of your cup, it’s not a good time to be readjusting your life patterns. The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop presents a concise overview of the history and diversification of the coffee industry. Heavily illustrated, The Coffee Book is a pocket-size pop culture reference manual, offering bite-size infobits on international trading policies, specialty coffee roasters, even the effects of caffeine in the brain. While not in-depth analysis, this little book is nevertheless a good source for quick facts on the coffee business and its potential future, particularly in its discussion of modern coffee cultivation and environmental policy.
The presence of a number of graphs and charts helps accelerate the flow of the text. By far the most informative and satisfying book in the basket is Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World (Basic Books, $27.50, 0465036317), the product of intensive research combined with light-hearted and enthusiastic writing. The author (whose previous work was a history of Coca-Cola) traces the bean from its obscure origins in Ethiopia through its dispersal via Islamic traders, from Reformation Europe’s coffee-klatch craze to the establishment of coffee as the American drink during the Civil War, and beyond through the complex (and often bloody) intertwining of coffee cultivation with Latin American governments. The book has an extensive bibliography and pointed illustrations (several images clearly illustrate the racism inherent in early American advertising), and is a fine road map of the history of coffee and its development into one of the most traded commodities in the world.
A nice cuppa java This springtime coffee is being celebrated in a number of different formats. Here are some of the offerings. Fortune in a Coffee Cup: Divination with Coffee Grounds (Llewellyn, $9.95, 1567186106) is ideal fodder for the novelty item shelf in a bookstore,…
A nice cuppa java This springtime coffee is being celebrated in a number of different formats. Here are some of the offerings. Fortune in a Coffee Cup: Divination with Coffee Grounds is ideal fodder for the novelty item shelf in a bookstore, coffee shop, or New Age store. The author has worked up a sizable semiology of meanings to the patterns of swirling leftover coffee grounds.
Apparently this practice is nothing new: This book is the culmination of a thousand years of oral tradition, and I believe the first time these secrets have appeared in print. If you see a padlock in the bottom of your coffee cup, it means you are feeling that too many decisions in your life are being made by others. But if you see a padlock in the middle of your cup, it’s not a good time to be readjusting your life patterns. The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop (The New Press, $14.95, 1565845080) presents a concise overview of the history and diversification of the coffee industry. Heavily illustrated, The Coffee Book is a pocket-size pop culture reference manual, offering bite-size infobits on international trading policies, specialty coffee roasters, even the effects of caffeine in the brain. While not in-depth analysis, this little book is nevertheless a good source for quick facts on the coffee business and its potential future, particularly in its discussion of modern coffee cultivation and environmental policy.
The presence of a number of graphs and charts helps accelerate the flow of the text. By far the most informative and satisfying book in the basket is Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World (Basic Books, $27.50, 0465036317), the product of intensive research combined with light-hearted and enthusiastic writing. The author (whose previous work was a history of Coca-Cola) traces the bean from its obscure origins in Ethiopia through its dispersal via Islamic traders, from Reformation Europe’s coffee-klatch craze to the establishment of coffee as the American drink during the Civil War, and beyond through the complex (and often bloody) intertwining of coffee cultivation with Latin American governments. The book has an extensive bibliography and pointed illustrations (several images clearly illustrate the racism inherent in early American advertising), and is a fine road map of the history of coffee and its development into one of the most traded commodities in the world.
A nice cuppa java This springtime coffee is being celebrated in a number of different formats. Here are some of the offerings. Fortune in a Coffee Cup: Divination with Coffee Grounds is ideal fodder for the novelty item shelf in a bookstore, coffee shop, or…
In today’s climate of giveittomeasfastasyoucan information, sports fans can be forgiven for being unaware that once upon a time, before sports cable TV, before sports radio, before the Internet, the only way to find out about your favorite player or team was by reading all about it. What we’ve come to expect (and demand) as the norm was preceded by thoughtful men of words who painted images of players and events in magazines and newspapers.
It’s therefore very welcome when a book like The Best American Sportswriting of the Century comes along, giving some a chance to reminisce and others the opportunity to discover a brave old world of sports journalism.
Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam, author of several sports books, as well as more serious works, does a marvelous job of collecting these pieces to weave a full tapestry of sports reading.
The book is divided into distinct sections. In The Best of the Best, we have the likes of Gay Talese writing on Joe DiMaggio’s life after baseball; Tom Wolfe on race car driver Junior Johnson; and Brad Darrach on chess master Bobby Fischer. In Columns and Writing on Deadline we have examples from Red Smith, Grantland Rice, and Westbrook Pegler, among others, to remind us why they are considered masters of the (typewriter) keyboard.
Features and Longer Pieces include contributions from such sports reporting icons as Ring and John Lardner, Roger Angell, George Plimpton, and Frank Deford. Regular journalists are well represented, too: Hunter Thompson demolishes the sacred rituals surrounding the Kentucky Derby; Mike Royko, Chicago’s curmudgeon laureate, lambasts a book by perennial all-star Keith Hernandez; and John Updike says his own goodbye in the celebrated Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, one of the most reprinted sports pieces of all time.
There’s also an entire section devoted to Muhammad Ali, who was recently selected as the all-time favorite athlete by consumers of a renowned breakfast cereal.
The Best American Sports Writing is a true treasure that fans of sports and good writing will surely savor.
Ron Kaplan is a reviewer in Montclair, New Jersey.
In today's climate of giveittomeasfastasyoucan information, sports fans can be forgiven for being unaware that once upon a time, before sports cable TV, before sports radio, before the Internet, the only way to find out about your favorite player or team was by reading all…
Lifestyles of the musical and famous Your friend Fred must make a speech at his company’s annual convention, and he hasn’t a clue where to begin collecting his information. You want to help Fred with his fact-finding mission, but private detectives are pricey, and your Web search returned hundreds of thousands of sites. What gift doesn’t require bloodhounds, a modem, or a fingerprint kit? Why books, of course! Ê ÊAt some point, everyone must write a report, an article, or speech. Reference books are imperative for research and documentation, and the handier, the better. Random House’s Famous Name Finder ($14, 037570602X) is the perfect tool when you can remember a name but can’t quite place the person. This book will eliminate the need to ask, who’s that person you know, the one who was married to . . . because it cross-references 10,000 people from various fields, including sports, entertainment, the arts, and history. Can’t remember the first name? Can’t remember the last name? Can’t remember the real name? The Famous Name Finder is indexed by first name, last name, nickname, and spouse’s name; each entry also includes biographical information. How many times have you watched a movie based on a favorite book, and walked away thinking about the differences between the two? Novels into Film: The Encyclopedia of Movies Adapted from Books (Checkmark Books, $16.95, 0816039615) is a book that identifies and examines how a book is translated to the big screen. Each entry includes a brief synopsis of the novel, and the film or films that adapted its story. The differences between the two, as well as differences in themes, characters, etc., are studied. Brief bibliographies are listed at the end of each passage, and various photographs are included. There is some critique involved, but the major emphasis here is not to determine the success or failure of film adaptations, but rather to inform the reader of the unique and specific process that goes into the translation of print to film. With a foreword by director Robert Wise, Novels into Film is a great choice for folks who love books, movies, or both. Everyone is familiar with dictionaries and encyclopedias, but references books are taking different and exciting paths that extend beyond mere alphabetizing. The Oxford Children’s Book of Famous People (Oxford University Press, $37.50, 0195215176) examines the lives of 1,000 well-known figures. From Aesop to Pele to William I, this is an ideal resource for short writing assignments, or a springboard for larger, more detailed amounts of research. Updated for the millennium, The Oxford Children’s Book of Famous People also includes entries about more recent notables, such as Tom Cruise, Tony Blair, Bill Gates, and Diana, Princess of Wales, to name a few. Readers will find extra guidance from the directories in the back, organized by theme and period. This is a wonderful quick-reference addition to any workspace.
Picture this: a gorgeous volume of album covers. DK Publishing’s 100 Best Album Covers: The Stories Behind the Sleeves ($19.95, 078944951X) provides music lovers with the inside scoop on the most artistically innovative album covers of all time. Learn about the visual artists behind the works, the labor-intense production schedules, the concepts behind the finished products and the alternative plans for jackets that were banned in certain countries. What makes this book particularly interesting is that authors Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell do not focus on the recording artists themselves; while certain Elvis, Beatles, and Prince albums are included, you’ll also find The Popinjays, System 7, and Happy Mondays receive equal page time. There’s plenty of insider information provided, but the focus is not on who topped the charts, but who had the eye-catching album covers. 100 Best Album Covers is a refreshing alternative for both music and art lovers. Cajun music is as flavorful as its food, and thanks to University Press of Mississippi, readers may sample it once again. Cajun and Creole Music Makers (Musiciens cadiens et creoles) ($35, 1578061709) has been re-issued and updated, thanks to author Barry Jean Ancelet and photographer Elemore Morgan Jr. Originally published in 1984, Cajun and Creole Music Makers is the definitive volume of Louisiana culture. To update the book for its re-issue, Ancelet and Morgan returned to the original material and added more recent musicians like Steve Riley and Dirk Powell. In some cases, such as Christine Balfa’s, it is a then and now perspective of Louisiana life. The text is featured in both English and French, and over 100 photographs show these musicians in various surroundings. The result is an intimate look at the inner workings and sustaining power behind the music. Who says information has to come in black and white text? Seaports of the South: A Journey is very informative and also beautiful enough to display. Author Louis D. Rubin Jr. and photographer John F. Harrington look at 13 seaports found in South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. Readers will travel with these two men, who have been friends since age 16, and marvel at the history and distinct personality that distinguish each seaport. Rubin and Harrington recount the development each port has undergone, particularly after the Civil War, and the unique commercial role that each seaport plays in our nation’s economy. Climb aboard and enjoy this spectacular journey through time and this region.
Lifestyles of the musical and famous Your friend Fred must make a speech at his company's annual convention, and he hasn't a clue where to begin collecting his information. You want to help Fred with his fact-finding mission, but private detectives are pricey, and your…
Everyone has experienced some form of heartbreak—in love, at home, on the job or in the star-crossed universe. When this happens, many of us kick-start our recovery by eating a solo pint of ice cream, lolling on the couch in tatty pajamas, shout-singing to newly cruel love songs or taking long, tearful walks in the rain.
These familiar remedies do help temper our emotions, as well as add hits of humor to romantic comedies. But what about new bodily pain that lingers? Unusual aches that confound? After all, heartbreak affects us physically, too. We cannot truly separate mind from body, head from heart.
Florence Williams knows this all too well. As she writes in her fascinating, frequently funny and altogether life-affirming new book, Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey, when her husband of 25 years informed her that their marriage was over, “I felt like I’d been axed in the heart, like I was missing a limb, set adrift in an ocean, loosed in a terrifying wood.”
Read our starred review of ‘Heartbreak’ by Florence Williams
Post-romance ruination wasn’t something Williams had previously encountered, having met her husband on her first day of college. “I was drawn to him,” she said in a call to her home in Washington, D.C. When their marriage ended, since she’d spent her entire adulthood side by side with him, “I had to learn lessons in my 50s that people normally learn from dating in their 20s and 30s.”
Williams is the author of two previous popular science books, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History (2012) and The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative (2017), as well as a contributing editor for Outside magazine and a science writer for the New York Times. So when heartbreak engulfed her personal life, she became an assiduous and motivated student of the science of devastation. “It’s my mode of trying to understand what’s going on,” Williams says. “I’m the sort of person who wants to know what my body is doing; I want to know test results. I believe knowledge is power.”
In pursuit of that knowledge, Williams traveled across America and overseas to numerous laboratories, scrutinizing her very cells, analyzing the changes in her health and spelunking the hallucinatory hollows of her own mind. (Indeed, the supervised use of MDMA was involved.) She even interviewed the U.K.’s Minister of Loneliness and took a moving and illuminating tour of the Museum of Broken Relationships in Croatia.
“There’s something about heartbreak and meeting people from this vulnerable place that makes people want to help.”
As scientists, researchers and other intellectually curious sorts gave Williams access to their work, they shared not only their findings on the risks of chronic loneliness (it increases the risk of early death by 26%) but also the fallout from their own painful romantic experiences. “There’s something about heartbreak and meeting people from this vulnerable place that makes people want to help,” Williams says. “A lot of barriers come down when you’re real with people, and that felt true when I talked to the scientists. I was really moved by how many of them shared their own vulnerabilities.”
In particular, a rather poetic comment from a genomics researcher bore out Williams’ persistent sense of urgency. “When Steve Cole said to me that heartbreak is one of the hidden land mines of human existence, and that it can put us on a path to early death, that was so arresting!” she says. “It made me want to drop everything and focus on getting better.” It also made her want to share what she had discovered with others. “Everyone else needs to know this, too. This is important.”
It was also vitally important for Williams, who says she “grew up spending summers living in a van with my dad, driving out West and canoeing every day,” to recenter herself in nature. Her husband had been a similarly adventurous partner, taking regular wilderness treks with Williams and their two children, who are now 18 and 20. But running rivers and hiking through forests on her own was something she’d never considered doing.
“A sense of curiosity is really helpful for emotional resilience.”
Williams explains, “When you live your life with a certain set of expectations, and all of a sudden the ground falls away . . . it challenges everything you think you know about yourself and the world, but it’s ultimately this wonderful opportunity to figure out who you are.” Williams has now completed a solo whitewater rafting trip.
Time and time again, Williams’ research makes the case “that a sense of curiosity is really helpful for emotional resilience. Learning to be more open, to cultivate beauty even when emotions are difficult, that kind of self-understanding is really helpful.”
When it comes to heartbreak (and Heartbreak), Williams adds, “Grief is a very human emotion, and sometimes we’re not very good at paying attention to our emotional state. . . . We’re so good at glossing over and distracting ourselves—at saying, ‘Everything’s fine here.’ But when life forces us to put down that delusion, it enriches our capacity to connect with other people. Ultimately, that’s what it’s all about, you know?”
Florence Williams author photo credit: Sue Barr
For a sunnier view of love and connection, try one of these four perceptive nonfiction reads.
