For the past two decades, James Beard Award winner, fermentation expert, and bestselling author Sandor Ellix Katz has traveled the world, both teaching and learning about the many fascinating and delicious techniques for fermenting foods. Wherever he’s gone, he has gleaned valuable insights into the cultures and traditions of local and Indigenous peoples, whether they make familiar ferments like sauerkraut or less common preparations like natto and koji. In his latest book, Sandor Katz’s Fermentation Journeys (Chelsea Green), Katz takes readers along with him to revisit these special places, people, and foods. Katz’s new cookbook reminds us that the magical power of fermentation belongs to everyone, everywhere. Perfect for adventurous foodies, armchair travelers, and fermentation fanatics who have followed Katz’s work through the years —…
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Madam (Doubleday) — the new book from Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Most Famous Man in America — is the compulsively readable and sometimes jaw-dropping story of the life of a notorious madam who played hostess to every gangster, politician, writer, sports star, and Cafe Society swell worth knowing, and who as much as any single figure helped make the twenties roar. Simply put: Everybody came to Polly’s. Pearl “Polly” Adler (1900-1962) was a diminutive dynamo whose Manhattan brothels in the Roaring Twenties became places not just for men to have the company of women but were key gathering places where the culturati and celebrity elite mingled with high society and with violent figures of the underworld — and had a good time…
Comments closedThe title of this conversation is also the title of the chapter written by Steve Forrester in the recently published book Eminent Oregonians. The book’s subtitle is Three Who Matter: Abigail Scott Duniway, Richard Neuberger, Jesse Applegate. Steve Forrester’s chapter focuses on why Neuberger is a forgotten figure in Oregon and national political history. Neuberger was the second Jew elected to the US Senate after the 17th Amendment, which mandated the popular election of senators. This chapter of the book is the first story of his life drawn from primary sources. Prior to moving to Astoria in 1987, Steve Forrester was Washington correspondent for Pacific Northwest newspapers in Washington, D.C., for ten years. He was also the publisher of NorthwestLetter, a political newsletter, and producer/host of…
Comments closedDon’t call it a comeback: bestselling author Shea Serrano’s latest book, Hip-Hop (And Other Things) (Twelve), combines the smooth hipness of A Tribe Called Quest, the hellfire of DMX, the quirky brilliance of Missy Elliot, and the sheer, unstoppable flow of Jay-Z into one enlightened compendium of hip-hop greatness. It’s a smart, fun, funny, insightful book that spends the entirety of its time celebrating what has become the most dominant form of music these past two and a half decades. Some of the chapters are serious, and some of the chapters are silly, and some of the chapters are a combination of both things. All of them, though, are treated with the care and respect that they deserve. Please note: This is a ticketed event.…
Comments closedReproductive freedom has never been in more dire straits. Roe v. Wade protected abortion rights and Planned Parenthood v. Casey unexpectedly preserved them. Yet in the following decades these rights have been gutted by restrictive state legislation, the appointment of hundreds of anti-abortion judges, and violence against abortion providers. Today, the ultra-conservative majority at the Supreme Court has activists, medical providers, and everyday Americans worry that we are about to lose our most fundamental reproductive protections. When Roe is toppled, abortion may quickly become a criminal offense in nearly one-third of the United States. At least six states have enacted bans on abortion as early as six weeks of pregnancy – before many women are even aware they are pregnant. Today, 89% of U.S. counties…
Comments closedRemember all those ingrained habits, cherished ideas, beloved objects, and stubborn preferences from the pre-Internet age? They’re gone. To some of those things we can say good riddance. But many we miss terribly. Whatever our emotional response to this departed realm, we are faced with the fact that nearly every aspect of modern life now takes place in filtered, isolated corners of cyberspace — a space that has slowly subsumed our physical habitats, replacing or transforming the office, our local library, a favorite bar, the movie theater, and the coffee shop where people met one another’s gaze from across the room. Even as we’ve gained the ability to gather without leaving our house, many of the fundamentally human experiences that have sustained us have disappeared.…
Comments closedSorry Not Sorry (Dutton) is Alyssa Milano’s sharply observed, uproarious, and deeply intimate ode to the life she has lived and the issues that matter most. In her new book, the actress and activist delivers a collection of powerful personal essays that get to the heart of her life, career, and all-out humanitarianism. Milano’s essays are unvarnished and elegant, funny and heartbreaking, and utterly real. A timely book that shows in almost real time the importance of taking care of others, it also gives a gut-punch-level wake-up call in an era where the noise is a distraction from what really needs to happen, if we want to live in a better world. These are stories of growing up in celebrity, of family and of friends,…
Comments closedFrom the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and America: The Farewell Tour comes a haunting and powerfully moving book that gives voice to the poorest among us and lays bare the cruelty of a penal system that too often defines their lives. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has taught courses in drama, literature, philosophy, and history since 2013 in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University at East Jersey State Prison and other New Jersey prisons. In his first class at East Jersey State Prison, where students read and discussed plays by Amiri Baraka and August Wilson, among others, his class set out to write a play of their own. In writing the play, Caged, which would run for…
Comments closedJoin us online for this conversation between Emily Rapp Black, The New York Times bestselling author of Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg, and Vanessa Severo, actor/playwright of Frida … A Self Portrait. Both artists will discuss how the life, art, and disabilities of Frida Kahlo have impacted their work. This event will be streamed online at YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. About Emily Rapp Black Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir (BloomsburyUSA) and The Still Point of the Turning World (Penguin Press), a New York Times bestseller and an Editor’s Pick. A former Fulbright scholar, she was educated at Harvard University, Trinity College-Dublin, Saint Olaf College, and the University of Texas-Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. A Guggenheim Fellow, she has received awards and fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Jentel…
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