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THE TRUFFLE UNDERGROUND

A TALE OF MYSTERY, MAYHEM, AND MANIPULATION IN THE SHADOWY MARKET OF THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE FUNGUS

A deftly crafted tale of obsessions and true crime in the culinary world.

A rare fungus inspires rapture, deceit, and stealth.

In an entertaining, revealing book debut, Pacific Standard deputy editor Jacobs brings his considerable skills as an investigative reporter to the fiercely competitive business of marketing truffles. Coveted by chefs and wealthy diners, truffles inspire rhapsodic descriptions of their earthy aroma and taste. “There’s something about them that is very primal,” one chef notes. “They get your attention at a very deep emotional level.” Tasting a white truffle, Jacobs reports, proved so intense that he felt transported, “momentarily, into an alternate universe, a place where flavor mattered more than truth and virtue.” Of the hundreds of truffle species, only a handful are edible, and of these, only two generate passionate “culinary fervor”: the rare, pale white truffle, “the culinary holy grail,” and black winter truffles, “the crown jewels,” which sell for an astonishing 500 to 1,000 euros per kilo. The truffles’ rarity and scarcity are the result of a complicated botanical process: Truffles’ spores emit a musk that attracts forest animals, which ingest them and release them as defecation on the forest floor. The spore cluster then needs to find a particular tree root in order to germinate, a process that can take decades; when it burrows into the root’s outer cells, a symbiotic relationship between tree and fungus begins, and through several seasons, if temperature and moisture are optimal, the truffle produces its edible fruit. Truffle hunters rely on specially trained dogs to sniff out their buried quarry, dogs that are vulnerable to stealing or poisoning by competitors. Truffles can be farmed as well as hunted, but competition is just as furious and “suspicion and paranoia” just as pervasive. France and Italy produce the most coveted truffles; some experts look for “the specific aroma that the Italian terroir imparts,” but other traders are not so particular, knowing that they can sell inferior truffles from Morocco, Tunisia, China, and Romania, passing them off as higher quality to buyers who desire “the appearance of wealth.”

A deftly crafted tale of obsessions and true crime in the culinary world.

Pub Date: June 4, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-451-49569-3

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Clarkson Potter

Review Posted Online: April 7, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Awards & Accolades

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Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.

During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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