A wildly inventive excursion through the creation of our daily bread—and our occasional carp à l’ancienne.
Four hours? A gimmick, to be sure, but a good one to lure you into this rangy, obsessive immersion in food and its many wonders.
We should become more conversant with the pot, the pan and all that issues therefrom, writes life-improvement guru Ferriss (The 4-Hour Body, 2010, etc.). You have so much to lose by not doing so. Eating well tones your body and mind, impresses people and increases your mating advantage. Even more, the tools needed to learn to cook well can be deployed in every manner of endeavor, from skinning a deer to memorizing a deck of cards. The author distills them into minimal, learnable units and examines how to order the units so as to keep readers engaged in their endeavors. Ferriss is a beguiling guide to this process, at once charmingly smart aleck-y and deadly serious, and he aims to make readers knowledgeable and freethinking. The author demonstrates how to hold a knife and cut an onion, but he also provides an engagement with the outdoors—how to build a shelter and butcher a kill, how to shop in Calcutta’s outdoor market and recognize a squirrel’s chirp (“akin to a Jack Russell digging through a chalkboard”). Ferriss also examines better eating through chemistry, which leads quite naturally to an extended encounter with Grant Achatz’s legendarily avant-garde cuisine—e.g., cigar-infused tequila hot chocolate. Ferriss is everywhere—preventing fat gain when you binge, poaching an egg, butchering a chicken, using liquid nitrogen, making a bacon rose—but is always focused on the main course: good eating.
A wildly inventive excursion through the creation of our daily bread—and our occasional carp à l’ancienne.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-0547884592
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Amazon/New Harvest
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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