I'm a culinary adventurer, always seeking the next flavor frontier. This curated collection represents my gastronomic wishlist: a tantalizing array of modern, regional, and hyper-specific cookbooks. Each volume promises to be a culinary journey, and I am giddy for the day I can finally dive in. If you buy them before I do, I will be understanding but I will curse you under my breath lol.

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Texas

Whole Food Cooking Made Irresistibly Simple

2019 James Beard Award Nominee (Health & Special Diets)

A sophisticated, yet simple take on cooking with whole foods--filled with creative combinations that use fewer ingredients to elevate everyday fare into something extraordinary.

This is not your average healthy cookbook.
This is slow food fast.
This is high-impact flavor in ten ingredients or less.
This is clean eating for the modern palate and schedule.
This is food you want to eat.
 
Think of the recipes as simple equations. Using a few ingredients + easy preparations + homemade condiments, author Jodi Moreno gives you the tools you need to create complex flavors with little effort. This food is perfect for a busy day but sophisticated enough to share.
 
With foolproof recipes like:
Coconut + Ginger + Turmeric + Oats
Honey Roasted Nectarines + Kale + Pine Nut + Oat Croutons
Harissa + Coconut Milk + Delicata Squash + Lentils
Salmon + Broccoli + Spicy Ginger Sesame Mustard
Apple + Miso + Date Crisp
 
Elegant, delicious, nourishing. This is More with Less.

More with Less

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Ivan Orkin

Chris Ying

David Chang

New York

Love, Obsession, and Recipes from Tokyo's Most Unlikely Noodle Joint

The end-all-be-all guide to ramen as told by the iconoclastic New Yorker whose unlikely life story led him to open Tokyo's top ramen shop--featuring 44 recipes!

"What Ivan Orkin does not know about noodles is not worth knowing."--Anthony Bourdain

While scores of people line up outside American ramen powerhouses like Momofuku Noodle Bar, chefs and food writers in the know revere Ivan Orkin's traditional Japanese take on ramen. Ivan Ramen chronicles Orkin's journey from dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker to the chef and owner of one of Japan's most-loved ramen restaurants, Ivan Ramen. His passion for ramen is contagious, his story fascinating, and his recipes to-die-for, including the complete, detailed recipe for his signature Shio Ramen, master recipes for the fundamental types of ramen, and some of his most popular ramen variations.

Likely the only chef in the world with the knowledge and access to convey such a candid look at Japanese cuisine to a Western audience, Orkin is perfectly positioned to author what will be the ultimate English-language overview on ramen and all of its components. Ivan Ramen will inspire you to forge your own path, give you insight into Japanese culture, and leave you with a deep appreciation for what goes into a seemingly simple bowl of noodles.

Ivan Ramen

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Dzung Lewis

Wisconsin

100 Healthy, Feel-Good Recipes to Live Deliciously

100 crave-worthy, wholesome recipes and time-saving tips for busy home cooks from the founder and host of the Honeysuckle channel on YouTube. The Honeysuckle Cookbook is stuffed with exciting ideas for easy, approachable, Asian-influenced cooking at home. With 100 recipes, from the breakfast favorites that consistently rate the highest in views on the author's popular YouTube channel (like her Overnight Oats, 6 Ways) to original twists on one-pan and pressure-cooker meals, this book is for those of us who want feel-good meals made healthy, delicious, and quick. Dzung's recipes take the familiar and turns it ever-so-slightly on its head: Marinara sauce gets extra umami with the addition of fish sauce, while mac and cheese becomes more than an out-of-the-box staple when made fresh with kimchi. Lattes get an extra kick from bold Vietnamese coffee and sweet, floral lavender, and quinoa pilaf is mixed with a creamy curry-miso dressing. Dzung also teaches readers how to stretch groceries so they spend a little less money, how to plan meals seasonally, and how to match main courses with sides so plates look impressive and taste great. With quick snack ideas, recipe hacks, foolproof instructions, and genius tips for pretty presentation, The Honeysuckle Cookbook will be the friendly hand busy young cooks need to hold in the kitchen.

The Honeysuckle Cookbook

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A Tasty Treat (Cookbooks)

A treasure trove of recipes for the passionate baker. From classic loaves to innovative pastries, this collection offers a diverse range of titles to inspire and delight. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting your baking journey, lets satisfy some of those cravings.

Hisako Ogita

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Connecticut

On t.p. and cover [love] appears as a heart.

I Love Macarons

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Roxana Jullapat

California

Recipes for the Grain Revolution

As the head baker and owner of a beloved Los Angeles bakery, Roxana Jullapat knows the difference local, sustainable flour can make: brown rice flour lightens up a cake, rustic rye adds unexpected chewiness to a bagel, and ground toasted oats enrich doughnuts. Her bakery, Friends & Family, works with dedicated farmers and millers around the country to source and incorporate the eight mother grains in every sweet, bread, or salad on the menu. In her debut cookbook, Roxana shares her greatest hits, over 90 recipes for reinventing your favorite cakes, cookies, pies, breads, and more.

Her chocolate chip cookie recipe can be made with any of the eight mother grains, each flour yielding a distinct snap, crunch, or chew. Her mouthwatering buckwheat pancake can reinvent itself with grainier cornmeal. One-bowl recipes such as Barley Pumpkin Bread and Spelt Blueberry Muffins will yield fast rewards, while her Cardamom Buns and Halvah Croissants are expertly laid out to grow a home baker's skills. Recipes are organized by grain to ensure you get the most out of every purchase.

Roxana even includes savory recipes for whole grain salads made with sorghum, Kamut or freekeh, or easy warm dishes such as Farro alla Pilota, Toasted Barley Soup, or Gallo Pinto which pays homage to her Costa Rican upbringing. Sunny step-by-step photos, a sourcing guide, storage tips, and notes on each grain's history round out this comprehensive cookbook.

Perfect for beginner bakers and pastry pros alike, Mother Grains proves that whole grains are the secret to making any recipe so much more than the sum of its parts.

Mother Grains

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Cedric Grolet

Alain Ducasse

Fruit: the art of pastry 
Author: Cedric Grolet; Alain Ducasse
Brand new still in plastic. 

Oversized Hardcover (4 to 6 lbs)

Massachusetts

The art of pastry 

C dric Grolet is simply the most talented pastry chef of his generation--he was named World's Best Pastry Chef in 2018. Food & Wine called his work "the apotheosis of confectionary creation." He fashions trompe l'oeil pieces that appear to be the most perfect, sparkling fruit but are, once cut, revealed to be exquisite pastries with surprising fillings. They are absolutely unforgettable, both to look at and, of course, to eat. This lush cookbook presents Grolet's fruit-based haute-couture pastries like works of art. The chef explains his techniques and his search for authentic tastes and offers a peek into his boundless imagination--he begins the creation of each dessert by drawing. With 130 recipes featuring 45 fruits--citrus, berries, wild and exotic fruits, and even nuts--every pastry lover will want Fruit, for inspiration and to admire the edible sculptures made by this award-winning star of French pastry making.

Fruit

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Bakers Paradise

Craving culinary inspiration?

I've tried a lot of different cookbooks, and these are my all-time favorites. From classic techniques to bold flavor combinations, these books are the trusted companions of culinary masters. If they aren't sold out, I would highly recommend buying them asap.

René Redzepi

David Zilber

Including Koji, Kombuchas, Shoyus, Misos, Vinegars, Garums, Lacto-Ferments, and Black Fruits and Vegetables

New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Best Cookbook of Fall 2018​ “An indispensable manual for home cooks and pro chefs.” —Wired At Noma—four times named the world’s best restaurant—every dish includes some form of fermentation, whether it’s a bright hit of vinegar, a deeply savory miso, an electrifying drop of garum, or the sweet intensity of black garlic. Fermentation is one of the foundations behind Noma’s extraordinary flavor profiles. Now René Redzepi, chef and co-owner of Noma, and David Zilber, the chef who runs the restaurant’s acclaimed fermentation lab, share never-before-revealed techniques to creating Noma’s extensive pantry of ferments. And they do so with a book conceived specifically to share their knowledge and techniques with home cooks. With more than 500 step-by-step photographs and illustrations, and with every recipe approachably written and meticulously tested, The Noma Guide to Fermentation takes readers far beyond the typical kimchi and sauerkraut to include koji, kombuchas, shoyus, misos, lacto-ferments, vinegars, garums, and black fruits and vegetables. And—perhaps even more important—it shows how to use these game-changing pantry ingredients in more than 100 original recipes. Fermentation is already building as the most significant new direction in food (and health). With The Noma Guide to Fermentation, it’s about to be taken to a whole new level.

The Noma Guide to Fermentation

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Niki Segnit

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Plant-Led Pairings, Recipes, and Ideas for Cooks

The plant-led follow-up to The Flavor Thesaurus, "a rich and witty and erudite collection" (Epicurious), featuring 92 essential ingredients and hundreds of flavor combinations. “After all the combinations you think you know, the ones you’ve never even considered will blow your mind ... Eggplants take you to chocolate, which takes you to miso, which takes you to seaweed, which takes you to a recipe in another book or a restaurant dish you have to hunt down straight away. The curiosity is infectious, the possibilities inspiring on this ingredient-led voyage.”--Yotam Ottolenghi in The New York Times Magazine, on how he uses More Flavors for recipe development "[Segnit is] a flavor genius . . . creative, imaginative, and fun."--Mark Bittman With her debut cookbook, The Flavor Thesaurus, Niki Segnit taught readers that no matter whether an ingredient is “grassy” like dill, cucumber, or peas, or “floral fruity” like figs, roses, or blueberries, flavors can be created in wildly imaginative ways. Now, she again draws from her “phenomenal body of work” (Yotam Ottolenghi) to produce a new treasury of pairings—this time with plant-led ingredients. More Flavors explores the character and tasting notes of chickpea, fennel, pomegranate, kale, lentil, miso, mustard, rye, pine nut, pistachio, poppy seed, sesame, turmeric, and wild rice—as well as favorites like almond, avocado, garlic, lemon, and parsley from the original—then expertly teaches readers how to pair them with ingredients that complement. With her celebrated blend of science, history, expertise, anecdotes, and signature sense of humor, Niki Segnit’s More Flavors is a modern classic of food writing, and a brilliantly useful, engaging reference book for every cook’s kitchen.

The Flavor Thesaurus: More Flavors

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This unique Cookbook is all about Citrus fruits, and incorporating them into 150+ delicious recipes for Soups, Small Plates, Salads, Main Courses, Sides, Desserts, Baking, Sweet Preserves & Sweets, Drinks  - - Lemons, Limes, Oranges, Grapefruit, Yuzu, and Kumquats. Sample Recipes: Lime & Chicken Tortilla Soup; Szechuan Peppercorn & Orange Beef; Dal with Lemon or Lime Curry; Coconut Lime & Lemongrass Chicken Salad; Marinated Fish; Pork & Grapefruit Stir-Fry; Citrus Butter Biscuits; Orange & Pistachio Cake; Chewy Citrus Caramels; Lemon Iced Tea. Beautiful color photos throughout. Condition notes: Book in excellent condition and appears unused based on clean, flat, very tight inside pages. Canvas-like cover in good condition with minor surface marks. See condition pics.  #hardcover #cookbook #citrus #citrustecipes #citruscooking #citrusmains #citrusbaking #desserts #citrusdrinks #preserves

150 Recipes Celebrating the Sweet and the Sour

Citrus fruits are the most exiciting family of ingredients with which to cook. They satisfy almost every part of the palate - sweet, sour, bitter, and umami-enhancing, how many other foods are as versatile and transformative?

From the smallest squeeze of lemon, to the zing of lime zest, citrus fruits are almost magical. No longer seen as exotic, they are truly international. take the humble lime: cornerstone of the American key lime pie, fragrant in Thai curries, fresh in Mexican guacamole, used to cook raw fish in South American ceviche, pickled in India, and dried in the Middle East.

Citrus offers 150 inspiring recipes that celebrate these wonderful fruits. Through fresh salads, soups, seafood, Asian and Mediterranean-influenced meat dishes, preserves and pickles, to the world of sweet pies, cakes, and cocktails, Catherine Phipps explores the myriad uses of oranges and lemons, and all things in between. Her recipes are straightforward, easy to follow, and work perfectly every time. Citrus is a vibrant, colorful source of delight and inspiration.

Citrus

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Chef Recommended Cookbooks

Dreaming of denser living, greener spaces, and more walkable communities? Explore the complexities of urban life, from transportation and housing to public spaces and sustainability. Whether you're a seasoned planner or a curious citizen, once you see how you build environment affects you you can never unsee it.

Michael Kimmelman

Walking New York

“‘The Intimate City’ is a joyful miscellany of people seeing things in the urban landscape, the streets alive with remembrances and ideas even when those streets are relatively empty of people.”—Robert Sullivan, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times architecture critic, his celebrated walking tours of New York City, now expanded, covering four of the five boroughs and some 540 million years of history, accompanied by some of the people who know it best As New York came to a halt with COVID, Michael Kimmelman composed an email to a group of architects, historians, writers, and friends, inviting them to take a walk. Wherever they liked, he wrote—preferably someplace meaningful to them, someplace that illuminated the city and what they loved about it. At first, the goal was distraction. At a scary moment when everything seemed uncertain, walking around New York served as a reminder of all the ways the city was still a rock, joy, and inspiration. What began with a lighthearted trip to explore Broadway’s shuttered theater district and a stroll along Museum Mile when the museums were closed soon took on a much larger meaning and ambition. These intimate, funny, richly detailed conversations between Kimmelman and his companions became anchors for millions of Times readers during the pandemic. The walks unpacked the essence of urban life and its social fabric—the history, plans, laws, feats of structural engineering, architectural highlights, and everyday realities that make up a place Kimmelman calls “humanity’s greatest achievement.” Filled with stunning photographs documenting the city during the era of COVID, The Intimate City is the ultimate insider’s guide. The book includes new walks through LGBTQ Greenwich Village, through Forest Hills, Queens, and Mott Haven, in the Bronx. All the walks can be walked, or just be read for pleasure, by know-it-all New Yorkers or anyone else. They take readers back to an age when Times Square was still a beaver pond and Yankee Stadium a salt marsh; across the Brooklyn Bridge, for green tea ice cream in Chinatown, for momos and samosas in Jackson Heights, to explore historic Black churches in Harlem and midcentury Mad Men skyscrapers on Park Avenue. A kaleidoscopic portrait of an enduring metropolis, The Intimate City reveals why New York, despite COVID and a long history of other calamities, continues to inspire and to mean so much to those who call it home and to countless others.

The Intimate City

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Pennsylvania

The History and Future of America's Infrastructure

A renowned historian and engineer explores the past, present, and future of America's crumbling infrastructure.Acclaimed engineer and historian Henry Petroski explores our core infrastructure from both historical and contemporary perspectives, explaining how essential their maintenance is to America's economic health. Petroski reveals the genesis of the many parts of America's highway system--our interstate numbering system, the centerline that divides roads, and such taken-for-granted objects as guardrails, stop signs, and traffic lights--all crucial to our national and local infrastructure.A compelling work of history, The Road Taken is also an urgent clarion call aimed at American citizens, politicians, and anyone with a vested interest in our economic well-being. Physical infrastructure in the United States is crumbling, and Petroski reveals the complex and challenging interplay between government and industry inherent in major infrastructure improvement. The road we take in the next decade toward rebuilding our aging infrastructure will in large part determine our future national prosperity.

The Road Taken

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Stanley I. Hart

Alvin L. Spivak

Automobile Dependence and Denial: Impacts on the Economy and Environment

The Elephant in the Bedroom

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City Planning/Urbanism/Transportation

This collection is for celebrating the joy of food, drink, and the art of living well. From classic cocktails to innovative culinary creations, this shelf offers a diverse range of titles for those wanting a know more about alcohol, what makes it tick and how we can use it beyond just sipping it. Whether you're a seasoned home chef or simply looking to elevate your next dinner party, Drunken Delights has something to whet your appetite.

#hardcover #wine #winemaking #nonfiction #cooking #educational

A Quick and Easy Guide to Understanding, Buying, Tasting, and Pairing Every Type of Wine

Rocket science is complicated, wine doesn't have to be! With information presented in an easy, illustrated style, and chock-full of the fool-proof and reliable knowledge of a seasoned oenophile, Wine Isn't Rocket Science is the guide you always wished existed. From how grapes are grown, harvested and turned into wine, to judging the color, aroma, and taste of the world's most popular varietals, to understanding terroir and feeling confident ordering and serving wine at any occasion, this book explains it all in the simplest possible way. Every page, every piece of information, and every detail is illustrated in charming and informative four-color drawings that explain concepts at a glance. Includes detailed information on the following varietals (wine made from a particular grape) in the order in which they're presented in the book: WhiteChardonnaySauvignon BlancCheninGewürztraminerViognierSemillonRieslingMarsanne BlendRolle-VermentinoMuscatPinot Grigio/GrisPinot BlancMuscadetSoaveAlbarinoTorrontesGruner VeltlinerAssyrtikoChampagneCavaProsecco RedPinot NoirCabernet-SauvignonMerlotCabernet-FrancMalbecPetit VerdotBordeaux BlendSyrahGrenacheMourvedreCarignanRhone/GSM BlendGamayNebbioloSangioveseBarberaValpolicella BlendAglianicoMontepulcianoNero D'AvolaNegroamaroZinfandelPetit SirahCarmenereTempranilloMenciaTouriga NacionalPinotageBlaufrankischLambruscoRose DessertPortSherry MarsalaMadeiraVin SantoSauternesTokaji Ice Wine

Wine Isn't Rocket Science

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Tom Standage

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

An offbeat history of the world traces the story of humankind from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century from the perspective of six different drinks--beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola--describing their pervasive influence during pivotal eras of world history, from humankind's adoption of agriculture to the advent of globalization. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses

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Tim Federle

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Indiana

Cocktails with a Literary Twist

Features 65 drink recipes inspired by history's most loved novels.

Tequila Mockingbird

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Drunken Delights

New Jersey

The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

The chef of New York's East Village Prune restaurant presents an unflinching account of her search for meaning and purpose in the food-central rural New Jersey home of her youth, marked by a first chicken kill, an international backpacking tour and the opening of a first restaurant. 50,000 first printing.

Blood, Bones and Butter

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Jonathan Safran Foer

Florida

Like many young Americans, Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his teenage and college years oscillating between enthusiastic carnivore and occasional vegetarian. As he became a husband, and then a father, the moral dimensions of eating became increasingly important to him. Faced with the prospect of being unable to explain why we eat some animals and not others, Foer set out to explore the origins of many eating traditions and the fictions involved with creating them. Traveling to the darkest corners of our dining habits, Foer raises the unspoken question behind every fish we eat, every chicken we fry, and every burger we grill. Part memoir and part investigative report, Eating Animals is a book that, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, places Jonathan Safran Foer "at the table with our greatest philosophers."

Eating Animals

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Mark Hyman

Missouri

How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet--One Bite at a Time

How to grow, produce, and consume food to resolve the world's health, environmental, social, and economic crises, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Mark Hyman, MD. Our most powerful tool to reverse the global epidemic of chronic disease, heal the environment, reform politics, and revive economies is food. What we eat has tremendous implications not just for our waistlines, but also for the planet, society, and the global economy. What we do to our bodies, we do to the planet; and what we do to the planet, we do to our bodies. In Food Fix, #1 bestselling author Mark Hyman explains how our food and agriculture policies are corrupted by money and lobbies that drive our biggest global crises: the spread of obesity and food-related chronic disease, climate change, poverty, violence, educational achievement gaps, and more. Pairing the latest developments in nutritional and environmental science with an unflinching look at the dark realities of the global food system and the policies that make it possible, Food Fix is a hard-hitting manifesto that will change the way you think about -- and eat -- food forever, and will provide solutions for citizens, businesses, and policy makers to create a healthier world, society, and planet.

Food Fix

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For Foodie's

I don't read fiction all that often, but I do enjoy losing myself in worlds unknown on occasion.  This here is my wishlist. Peruse at your own risk and buy them up before I do.

Daniel Kraus

Georgia

A Novel

"Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool's errand-to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it's a long shot, but Jay feels it's the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad's death by suicide the previous year. The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid's tenacles and drawn into the whale's mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out-one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale."--

Whalefall

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Bonnie Garmus

Ohio

"Set in 1960s California, this ... debut is the ... story of a female scientist whose career is constantly derailed by the idea that a woman's place is in the home, only to find herself starring as the host of America's most beloved TV cooking show"--

Lessons in Chemistry

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Pierce Brown

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

A tale set in a bleak future society torn by class divisions follows the experiences of secret revolutionary Darrow, who after witnessing his wife's execution by an oppressive government joins a revolutionary cell and attempts to infiltrate an elite military academy.

Red Rising

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Journey Far Far Away (Fiction)

Tired of grand sweeping narratives? Dive deep into the fascinating details of everyday life with microhistory! Discover how a single event, person, or object can illuminate entire eras. It's like finding a tiny puzzle piece that completes the colossal image of history.

Simon Garfield

A Book about Fonts

A delightfully inquisitive tour that explores the rich history and the subtle powers of fonts.

Fonts surround us every day, on street signs and buildings, on movie posters and books, and on just about every product that we buy. But where do fonts come from and why do we need so many? Who is behind the businesslike subtlety of Times New Roman, the cool detachment of Arial, or the maddening lightness of Comic Sans (and the movement to ban it)? Simon Garfield embarks on a mission to answer these questions and more, and reveal what may be the very best and worst fonts in the world.

Typefaces are now 560 years old, but we barely knew their names until about twenty years ago, when the pull-down font menus on our first computers made us all the gods of type. Beginning in the early days of Gutenberg and ending with the most adventurous digital fonts, Garfield unravels our age old obsession with the way our words look. Just My Type investigates a range of modern mysteries, including how Helvetica took over the world, what inspires the seemingly ubiquitous use of Trajan on bad movie posters, and what makes a font look presidential, male or female, American, British, German, or Jewish. From the typeface of Beatlemania to the graphic vision of the Obama campaign, fonts can signal a musical revolution or the rise of an American president. This book is a must-read for the design conscious that will forever change the way you look at the printed word.

Just My Type

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Gideon Defoe

The remarkable (and occasionally ridiculous) stories of 48 nations that fell off the map.

"Countries are just daft stories we tell each other. They're all equally implausible once you get up close."

Countries die. Sometimes it's murder, sometimes it's by accident, and sometimes it's because they were so ludicrous they didn't deserve to exist in the first place. This is an atlas of 48 nations that fell off the map. Their causes of death range from the implausible (jerky prices) to the unfortunate (too evil) to the downright bizarre (the flip of a coin). The polite way of writing an obituary is: dwell on the good bits, gloss over the embarrassing stuff. This book refuses to do so, because these dead nations are so ridiculous that it's impossible to skip the embarrassing stuff.

 ★ "This book is a sparkling gem."--Booklist (Starred Review)

"Perfect for fans of Atlas Obscura."--Publishers Weekly

An Atlas of Extinct Countries

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Thomas Morris

Cover is a little worn but otherwise in excellent condition! Fascinating and actually very funny stories of medical curiosities! 

Colorado

And Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine

"Delightfully horrifying."--Popular Science
One of Mental Floss's Best Books of 2018
One of Science Friday's Best Science Books of 2018

This wryly humorous collection of stories about bizarre medical treatments and cases offers a unique portrait of a bygone era in all its jaw-dropping weirdness.

A puzzling series of dental explosions beginning in the nineteenth century is just one of many strange tales that have long lain undiscovered in the pages of old medical journals. Award-winning medical historian Thomas Morris delivers one of the most remarkable, cringe-inducing collections of stories ever assembled. Witness Mysterious Illnesses (such as the Rhode Island woman who peed through her nose), Horrifying Operations (1781: A French soldier in India operates on his own bladder stone), Tall Tales (like the "amphibious infant" of Chicago, a baby that could apparently swim underwater for half an hour), Unfortunate Predicaments (such as that of the boy who honked like a goose after inhaling a bird's larynx), and a plethora of other marvels.

Beyond a series of anecdotes, these painfully amusing stories reveal a great deal about the evolution of modern medicine. Some show the medical profession hopeless in the face of ailments that today would be quickly banished by modern drugs; but others are heartening tales of recovery against the odds, patients saved from death by the devotion or ingenuity of a conscientious doctor.

However embarrassing the ailment or ludicrous the treatment, every case in The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth tells us something about the knowledge (and ignorance) of an earlier age, along with the sheer resilience of human life.

The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth

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Micro-histories

Delve into the depths of knowledge with my curated non-fiction wish list. Whether you're a history buff, a science enthusiast, or simply curious about the world, I've got you covered. From groundbreaking discoveries to thought-provoking analyses, these books offer a window into the complexities of our universe. So, buckle up and prepare for intellectual adventure.

Nicholas Carr

Arkansas

What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Expanding on an article that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the best-selling author of The Big Switch discusses the intellectual and cultural consequences of the Internet, and how it may be transforming our neural pathways for the worse.

The Shallows

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Roger L. Martin

Overcoming America's Obsession with Economic Efficiency

American democratic capitalism is in danger. How can we save it? For its first 200 years, the American economy exhibited truly impressive performance. The combination of democratically elected governments and a capitalist system worked, with ever-increasing levels of efficiency, spurred by division of labor, international trade, and scientific management of companies. By the nation's bicentenary in 1976, the American economy was the envy of the world. But since then, outcomes have changed dramatically. Growth in the economic prosperity of the average American family has slowed to a crawl, while the wealth of the richest Americans has grown to a level never seen before. This imbalance threatens the American democratic capitalist system, which only works when the average family benefits enough to keep voting for it. In this bracing yet constructive book, world-renowned business thinker Roger Martin starkly outlines the fundamental problem: we have treated the economy as a machine for which the pursuit of ever-greater efficiency is considered an inherently good thing. But it has become too much of a good thing. Our obsession with efficiency has inadvertently shifted the shape of our economic outcomes: from a large middle class and smaller numbers of rich and poor (think of a bell-shaped curve) to a greater share of benefits accruing to a thin tail of already rich Americans (a Pareto distribution). We must stop treating the economy as a perfectible machine, Martin argues, and shift toward viewing it as a complex adaptive system in which we must seek a fundamental balance of efficiency with resilience. To achieve this, we need to keep in mind the whole while working on the component parts; pursue improvement, not perfection; and relentlessly tweak instead of attempting to find permanent solutions. Filled with keen economic insight and advice for citizens, executives, policymakers, and educators, When More Is Not Better is the must-read guide for saving democratic capitalism.

When More Is Not Better

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Christopher Ketcham

Ex-library so there are a couple stamps on the bottom and inside cover. 

How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West

"A big, bold book about public lands . . . The Desert Solitaire of our time." --Outside 

A hard-hitting look at the battle now raging over the fate of the public lands in the American West--and a plea for the protection of these last wild places

The public lands of the western United States comprise some 450 million acres of grassland, steppe land, canyons, forests, and mountains. It's an American commons, and it is under assault as never before.

Journalist Christopher Ketcham has been documenting the confluence of commercial exploitation and governmental misconduct in this region for over a decade. His revelatory book takes the reader on a journey across these last wild places, to see how capitalism is killing our great commons. Ketcham begins in Utah, revealing the environmental destruction caused by unregulated public lands livestock grazing, and exposing rampant malfeasance in the federal land management agencies, who have been compromised by the profit-driven livestock and energy interests they are supposed to regulate. He then turns to the broad effects of those corrupt politics on wildlife. He tracks the Department of Interior's failure to implement and enforce the Endangered Species Act--including its stark betrayal of protections for the grizzly bear and the sage grouse--and investigates the destructive behavior of U.S. Wildlife Services in their shocking mass slaughter of animals that threaten the livestock industry. Along the way, Ketcham talks with ecologists, biologists, botanists, former government employees, whistleblowers, grassroots environmentalists and other citizens who are fighting to protect the public domain for future generations.

This Land is a colorful muckraking journey--part Edward Abbey, part Upton Sinclair--exposing the rot in American politics that is rapidly leading to the sell-out of our national heritage. The book ends with Ketcham's vision of ecological restoration for the American West: freeing the trampled, denuded ecosystems from the effects of grazing, enforcing the laws already in place to defend biodiversity, allowing the native species of the West to recover under a fully implemented Endangered Species Act, and establishing vast stretches of public land where there will be no development at all, not even for recreation.

This Land

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Non-fiction Brain Expanders

Cookbooks worth keeping an eye out for. Missed buying them the first time around, but I wont make that mistake twice

Colu Henry

Inspired Dinners to Cook on the Fly: a Cookbook

Here are more than 75 sophisticated, weeknight-friendly pasta dishes that come together in the same amount of time it takes to boil the water. As much a mindset as it is a cookbook, Back Pocket Pasta shows how a well-stocked kitchen and a few seasonal ingredients can be the driving force behind delicious, simply prepared meals. Pantry staples—a handful of items to help you up your dinner game—give you a head start come 6pm, so you can start cooking in your head on the way home from work. For instance, if you know that you have a tin of anchovies, a hunk of parmesan, and panko bread crumbs, you can pick up fresh kale to make Tuscan Kale "Caesar" Pasta. Or if you have capers, red pepper flakes, and a lemon, you can make Linguine with Quick Chili Oil. With genius flavor combinations, a gorgeous photograph for every recipe, and a smart guide to easy-drinking cocktails and wine, Back Pocket Pasta will inspire you to cook better meals faster. "Who knew just five ingredients could taste like magic?!" --Refinery29

Back Pocket Pasta

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Peter Reinhart

Tennessee

Square Pies to Make at Home, from Roman, Sicilian, and Detroit, to Grandma Pies and Focaccia [a Cookbook]

An in-depth guide to pan pizza from baking authority Peter Reinhart, including achievable recipes for making Detroit-, Sicilian-, and Roman-style pan pizzas and focaccias in a home oven. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FOOD NETWORK This new book from bread legend Peter Reinhart is a lushly photographed ode to the pan pizza, a doughy, crispy, crowd-pleasing version of everyone's favorite food that is easy to make in a home oven without specialty equipment like stones and peels. Starting with recipes for three master doughs that can be made with commercial yeast, as well as a brief intro to sourdough starters, Perfect Pan Pizza illustrates how to make several styles of pan pizza including Detroit-style "deep pan" pizza, focaccia and schiacciata, and Roman and Sicilian styles through step-by-step photographs. The pizzas include classic toppings like pepperoni and mushrooms, as well as an exciting variety of recipes like the sandwich-inspired Philly-style Roast Pork and Broccoli Rabe; Reuben pizza; Bacon and Egg with Tomato and Arugula Pizza; Blue Cheese, Balsamic Onion Marmalade, and Walnut Focaccia; and Rosemary Garlic Potato, Baby Kale, and Prosciutto Pizza Al Taglio. With unique recipes, plenty of informative FAQs for beginners, and a permissive and inspiring tone, this book will appeal to both experienced bread bakers and novice home pizza makers alike.

Perfect Pan Pizza

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Jason Wang

Jessica Chou

Jenny Huang

The Cuisine of Western China, from New York's Favorite Noodle Shop

The long-awaited cookbook from an iconic New York restaurant, revealing never-before-published recipes



AN EATER BEST COOKBOOK OF FALL 2020

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST COOKBOOK OF FALL 2020

A BALTIMORE SUN BEST COOKBOOK OF FALL 2020

A ROBB REPORT BEST COOKBOOK OF FALL 2020

A FOOD & WINE FALL 20 COOKBOOK PICK

A WSJ MAGAZINE BEST-DESIGNED ITEM



Since its humble opening in 2005, Xi'an Famous Foods has expanded from one stall in Flushing to 14 locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. CEO Jason Wang divulges the untold story of how this empire came to be, alongside the never-before-published recipes that helped create this New York City icon. From heavenly ribbons of liang pi doused in a bright vinegar sauce to ﬂatbread ﬁlled with caramelized pork to cumin lamb over hand-pulled Biang Biang noodles, this cookbook helps home cooks make the dishes that fans of Xi'an Famous Foods line up for while also exploring the vibrant cuisine and culture of Xi'an.



Transporting readers to the streets of Xi'an and the kitchens of New York's Chinatown, Xi'an Famous Foods is the cookbook that fans of Xi'an Famous Foods have been waiting for.



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Shelves by Prim's Bookshelf

Prim's Bookshelf

A Tasty Treat (Cookbooks)

Bakers Paradise

Chef Recommended Cookbooks

City Planning/Urbanism/Transportati...

Drunken Delights

For Foodie's

Journey Far Far Away (Fiction)

Micro-histories

Non-fiction Brain Expanders

Sold Out Cookbooks