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What to read this Halloween, based on your ideal spooky activity

Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
NonfictionLifestylesCookbooks

Bodega Bakes

In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
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Wasn’t That a Time

So much has been written about the Weavers being blacklisted from performing in the 1950s that it obscures the far more important fact that they still became one of America’s most influential pop music groups.
LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

May I Come In?

Review by Susannah Felts

Top Pick in Lifestyles, December 2018

A similar approach can be found in famed stylist Wendy Goodman’s May I Come In?: Discovering the World in Other People’s Houses. Like Thompson, Goodman, driven by curiosity, makes a study of the interiors of artistic individuals. “[T]he most captivating rooms exist where decoration is a by-product of a person’s passions in life,” she writes. But Goodman’s quest is fueled by A-list access, and the spaces she explores belong to figures like Richard Avedon, Donatella and Gianni Versace and Todd Oldham. The homes on display here are sometimes quite posh and ornate, and other times more modest but rip-roaringly colorful, bursting with aesthetic whimsy. Goodman’s introductory essays are wonderful soupçons of observation; of Gloria Vanderbilt, she writes, “Nothing better illustrates her originality, or instinct for design, than the bedroom she created on East Sixty-Seventh Street, where she covered every inch of the room—walls, floor, and ceiling—with a collage of cut-up quilts.” Come, settle in for a look at the living quarters of the cultural elite.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

 

Come, settle in for a look at the living quarters of the cultural elite.

Artists’ Homes

In Artists’ Homes: Live/Work Spaces for Modern Makers, photographer and author Tom Harford Thompson lets the smallest details in the homes and workspaces of U.K.-based artists do the work of telling their stories.

NonfictionPhotographyLifestyles

Instastyle

Review by Susannah Felts

If you have an Instagram account, it’s almost certain you’ve wondered about the ways of Instagram “influencers,” people who make a living by mastering this photo-sharing social media service. Tezza (née Tessa Barton) demystifies it all in Instastyle. Total newb to Instagram? Tezza is here with the absolute basics on setting up an account and photography 101 tips. But she also digs deep into concepts like weekly workflow, creating grid layouts, the art of the “flat lay,” writing captions, running contests, editing tools, styling food for photos and more. (Sample tip: Odd numbers appeal to the eye.) It might all seem, humorously, a little much to those of us who casually document our pets, babies and the occasional vacation. But I found this peek into the high-stakes influencer game fairly fascinating—and I can’t help but imagine that a few decades from now, after technology has marched on, this book will surely be a wonderful “how we lived then” relic. Right now, it’ll make a great holiday gift for the budding ’Grammer in your life.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you have an Instagram account, it’s almost certain you’ve wondered about the ways of Instagram “influencers,” people who make a living by mastering this photo-sharing social media service.

Bringing Down the Colonel

Madeline Pollard’s breach-of-promise lawsuit against famous Kentucky Congressman William Breckinridge was the talk of Washington, D.C., in 1894. When close to 20 women arrived at the courtroom as spectators to the buzzy trial, the judge politely threw them out—the testimony was far too indelicate for ladies to hear. But women had the last laugh: Representative Breckinridge, an eloquent political superstar, couldn’t escape the women who testified against him, the wealthy female activists who publicly backed Pollard and the ordinary women of central Kentucky who campaigned against his re-election, decades before they obtained suffrage.

NonfictionAudioAmerican History

These Truths

Review by Sukey Howard

Top Pick in Audio, December 2018

In her new book, These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore writes, “The past is an inheritance, a gift, and a burden. . . . There’s nothing for it but to get to know it.” To make our past more knowable, Lepore has penned an astonishingly concise, exuberant and elegant one-volume American history that begins with Columbus and ends with Trump. Lepore questions, as Alexander Hamilton did, “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice.” Lepore tells us upfront that much historical detail is left out; this is a political history, an explanation of the origins of our democratic institutions, and it lets history’s vast array of characters speak in their own words when possible. It also makes clear that slavery is an intimate, inextricable part of the American story. This is the past we need to know. Listen closely as Lepore reads with unexpected pizazz.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

 

In her new book, These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore writes, “The past is an inheritance, a gift, and a burden. . . . There’s nothing for it but to get to know it.”

The White Darkness

Henry Worsley was 13 when he read Ernest Shackleton’s The Heart of the Antarctic, which detailed Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic in the early 20th century. Worsley fell under Shackleton’s spell, and the book shaped his own future as an explorer.

Cookbooks

All About Cake

Review by Sybil Pratt

Top Pick in Cookbooks, December 2018

’Tis the season for baked sweets, and Christina Tosi, the two-time James Beard Award-winning baker, mastermind maven and chef/owner of Milk Bar, will amp up your cake-making capabilities. The wildly innovative Tosi, who found most cakes to be boringly blah, decided to find ways to give them the verve and variety her sugary sensations are renowned for. The remarkable results are all in All About Cake. These winners—from bundts and a Strawberry Layer Cake to cupcakes, sheet cakes, fancy layer cakes, cake truffles (yes, you can turn out a Cake Truffle Croquembouche for Christmas), microwave mug cakes and a Banana-Chocolate-Peanut Butter Crock-Pot Cake—tell flavor stories with creative fillings, craveable crunches, hidden gems of texture and Tosi’s signature unfrosted sides. Having at your side a wonderfully opinionated pro like Tosi who can’t—and shouldn’t—curb her enthusiasm and instructional fervor for all things baking is an unbeatable, delectable treat.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

 

’Tis the season for baked sweets, and Christina Tosi, the two-time James Beard Award-winning baker, mastermind maven and chef/owner of Milk Bar, will amp up your cake-making capabilities.

Tasting Italy

National Geographic and America’s Test Kitchen have combined their prodigious talents to produce the lusciously extravagant Tasting Italy: A Culinary Journey.

Cookbooks

Israeli Soul

Review by Sybil Pratt

Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook’s first cookbook, Zahav, was named the Best International Cookbook in 2016 by the James Beard Foundation. Now the pair is back with Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious, an appreciative deep dive into iconic Israeli food, and its release is perfectly timed for Israel’s 70th anniversary. With fabulous photos of food and people, plus instructive, step-by-step photos, Israeli Soul is a home cook-friendly culinary tour of the dishes brought to Israel by immigrants and shaped by cultures “both ancient and modern.” Solomonov and Cook’s exuberant narrative details their “soul odyssey,” searching market stalls, restaurants, street carts and bakeries in big cities and remote villages for the best versions of gastronomic go-to’s like hummus, pita, shawarma and falafel, plus sabich, salads, soups, stuffed veggies, kebabs and sweets. It’s an irresistible invitation to enjoy the legendary soul food of Israel.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook’s first cookbook, Zahav, was named the Best International Cookbook in 2016 by the James Beard Foundation. Now the pair is back with Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious, an appreciative deep dive into iconic Israeli food.

The War Before the War

The general consensus about the origins of the Civil War point to one irrevocable catalyst: the institution of slavery in the South. Although some would argue that the founding of the United States technically did not depend upon the issue of slavery, the practice had already been threaded into American life by the United States’ inception. With fine-combed research, Andrew Delblanco, the Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University and 2012 recipient of the National Humanities Medal, argues that the Fugitive Slave Act as the centralized fuse that sparked the Civil War.
NonfictionTrue Crime

An Unexplained Death

Review by Catherine Hollis

The labyrinthine corridors of Baltimore’s Belvedere hotel hide secrets and stories. If the rooms could talk, they’d speak of illicit affairs, crimes gone wrong and suicides. A true crime writer like Mikita Brottman couldn’t ask for a more perfect place to live. But when a partly decomposed body is discovered on the 13th floor, she is drawn into a dangerous obsession.

In An Unexplained Death, Brottman details the decade she spent seeking answers to the death of Rey Rivera—a handsome, newly married man who had seemingly everything to live for—who fell from the roof of the Belvedere hotel in 2006. Baltimore’s police treat the case as a suicide, but Brottman is convinced that something more occurred. Brottman’s investigation spirals compulsively down every possible avenue as she researches Rivera’s employer, Freemasonry, the history of suicides at the Belvedere and manuals for hotel owners on how to handle guest deaths.

Brottman’s psychological drama is perhaps the real story here. What is the hold this unexplained death has over her? Brottman speaks of a lifelong feeling of being invisible, and as she haunts the halls of the Belvedere in her nightgown, she becomes something of a ghost herself. Her attachment to Rivera’s death and her need to discover whether it is a murder or suicide drive her to the edge of sanity and safety.

An Unexplained Death is a compulsive exploration of the shadowy borders of our collective fascination with unsolved crimes. It also offers a fascinating glimpse into the darker history of a once majestic hotel. But the most important story it tells is about the interrelationship of death and memory, how we remember and memorialize our loved ones, and how we fear being forgotten after we die. In the end, Brottman’s exploration of Rey Rivera’s death is an act of narrative remembrance.

The labyrinthine corridors of Baltimore’s Belvedere hotel hide secrets and stories. If the rooms could talk, they’d speak of illicit affairs, crimes gone wrong and suicides. A true crime writer like Mikita Brottman couldn’t ask for a more perfect place to live. But when a partly decomposed body is discovered on the 13th floor, she is drawn into a dangerous obsession.

Why We Dream

The science of sleep and its importance to our health seems to be in the news almost every day. But the science of dreams? Not so much. However, though it may lag behind the research on sleep, dream research is catching up; it turns out that our dreams affect our well-being, too, as Alice Robb writes in her lively, immersive Why We Dream: The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey.

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