The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York
by Claudia Roden Knopf
Our Price: $35.00
I was planning on waiting until the holiday season to write a recommendation for this book (it certainly would be a very good Hanukkah gift,) but the onset of summer forced my hand. Sumptuous North-African feasts, perfect for warm lazy afternoons, are just some of the recipes you will find in The Book of Jewish Food.
When you think of “Jewish food” you probably think, as I did, of matzo ball soup, pastrami, pickled herring, knishes, bagels and bacon-cheeseburgers (just seeing if you were paying attention.) Roden's cookbook does include these Eastern-European recipes, but the majority of the book is devoted to the relatively unknown cookery of the non-Ashkenazi Jewish world: wonderful Spanish, Italian, North African, Mesopotamian, Ethiopian and Indian dishes are all represented.
While the recipes are certainly very good, Roden's stories introducing the different regions are just as delightful. You may find yourself starting a cooking session and spending all the inactive time reading about “The Babylonian Jews in the Land of the Two Rivers” or the “Lost Jews of China.”
Finally, you may have as much fun as I did discovering how Jews from other parts of the world celebrate familiar holidays. Two years ago, instead of making fish for Rosh Hashana, I made Iraqi Kofta Mishmisheya, or Meatballs in Apricot Sauce because in Sephardic communities, “Round foods, such as meatballs, green peas, chickpeas, and round or ring-shaped breads and pastries, embody the aspiration that the year is full and rounded” (29).
In the grand tradition of Christopher Alexander, Design is an excellently written handbook for holistic city design which will help knit together a planning process that is fractured: citizen groups fanatically protecting their democratic rights on one side, and ecological technocrats who have little time for the fickle judgment of the masses on the other. Hester's solution is good design. For example, by designing a skinny street, one can encourage pedestrian interaction, which in turn promotes direct democracy. Meanwhile, the same good design can encourage walking, discourage car use, therefore be ecologically friendly. Embedded in good design advice are stories of successes from around the world and many diagrams and pictures. Design is for the citizen activist concerned about the state of the environment, the environmentalist who wants to make a difference in a human-oriented manner and the planners and designers trying to bring them together.
When I first looked at this book, it looked perfect for me: A huge map (possibly my favorite type of object) focusing on Eastern and Central Europe, marking several places to which I had visited and love. The title, The Historian.... this must be a book that plays with historical documents and literature in fun ways. I thought to my self: this is everything I look for in a book. I started reading, and got completely sucked in. Everything I was looking for was delivered.
But no one told me it was about VAMPIRES! Seems like this is the type information they would let you in on. I donÂ’t read horror books, and even though I had been to Romania and seen Vlad TepesÂ’ grave, I had never read Dracula. Nevertheless, this book wouldnÂ’t let me go once it had sunk its teeth in. It isnÂ’t too scary, but the story is completely engaging. One of my favorites of the year.
For anyone interested in good urban design and planning dense cities, this is an important book. For anyone who likes looking at detailed maps and plans of urban spaces, this is a book that packs a lot of fun. Great Streets shows how it is not buildings that create great urbanity, but rather the negative space between the buildings, the “outside rooms.” The first two parts of the book are graphic, analytic and whimsical analyses of great streets around the world. The third section of Great Streets is my favorite, however. Each page has a square mile street-and-block diagram of cities around the world without any text. By showing different cities on the same scale, Jacobs gives the reader a set of powerful contrasts that are so powerful that no textual analysis is necessary.
Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City
by William J. Mitchell MIT Press
Our Price: $16.95
Placing Words is the latest offering from MIT professor William J. Mitchell. Don’t be intimidated by the blurb on the back—this is actually an extremely funny and engaging group of intelligent essays by a well-respected architect and urban planner. Mitchell writes on everything from the architecture of the Lilliputian Flores people to nerd humor. The book is certainly about architecture and urbanism, but just open up to the first paragraph of the essay A Neutron Walks into a Bar or The Munchkin Modulor and you will get a sense of Mitchell’s humor. Placing Worlds will appeal to the essay reader and architect in all of us.
Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, 1965 - 1995
by David Dodd Free Press
Our Price: $35.00
More than simply a compendium of Dead lyrics, this book is the culmination of a many-year-long Internet research project. The depth of the annotation is a credit to the many, many people who contributed to the website. The book has fine drawings by Jim Carpenter and a great index to boot. Great for casual reading, research, or as a gift; I recommend this book.
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
by Andres Duany North Point Press
Our Price: $18.00
“Among other things, this book is an appeal to the ‘armchair architect’ to become an armchair urbanist. Thanks to several decades of activism, more and more urban-scale projects are being developed with the active participation of citizens in the design process. Their common sense is a necessary foil against the technical expertise of specialists."
Inhabiting a space somewhere between the timelessness of Garcia MarquezÂ’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the connected story form of MitchellÂ’s Cloud Atlas and the setting of AsimovÂ’s Foundation series, The Carpet Makers is a pleasure to encounter. Additionally, this is the first German Sci-Fi that I am aware of to be translated into English, and it is quite a good showing for the country. I highly recommend this book.
