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MY EMPIRE OF DIRT

HOW ONE MAN TURNED HIS BIG-CITY BACKYARD INTO A FARM

An occasionally snarky, consistently engaging experiment in environmental science.

A magazine journalist cultivates a farm in his Brooklyn backyard.

Whether chasing a celebrity chef to Brazil or ghostwriting an editor’s intimate chronicle of infidelities, Howard, a former editor at Gourmet magazine, among others, has had more than his share of “hairbrained assignments.” So it came as no surprise when a New York Magazine editor commissioned an experiment in slow-food urban agriculture whereby the author would farm his own provisions—enough to sustain him for one month. Here, the author expands his James Beard Foundation Award–winning article into a book about self-sustainability and the benefits of responsible, eco-friendly consumption. Converting the clay-like “barren earth” of the author’s backyard into a crop-producing garden was no easy feat. Aided by hydroponic technology, plants flourished and the garage soon became a habitable barn. However, tribulations began to mount. Acquiring tilapia proved futile, rabbits resisted mating (“My rabbits don’t fuck like rabbits”), Howard’s pinkie was practically severed from a botched attempt at chicken-coop construction and a surprise tornado drowned bean, squash, pumpkin and tomato plants. The author’s tireless farming efforts also put a strain on his marriage to successful businesswoman Lisa. Woven throughout the refreshingly honest narrative are charming familial memories: the couple’s droll, much-negotiated decision to keep their first child and to marry, the delivery of a second child precipitating a relocation to Prospect Park and frequent asides on Brooklyn’s history and ponderings from farmer and “agrarian activist” and “partisan in the politics of domesticity” Wendell Berry. Howard’s skeptical thoughts on those who seek out locally grown produce versus the “clinical mechanization” of food may flummox environmentally friendly readers, but by harvest time, the author proves an outspoken and productive modern-day farmer.

An occasionally snarky, consistently engaging experiment in environmental science.

Pub Date: April 27, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-4165-8516-9

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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