Harvard Book Store: Staff Recommendations: Jeni, Bookseller

Jeni's Recommended Books:

, by Jane and Michael Stern
The Sterns must be two of America's most unpretentious food critics in print today. They regularly tour the country in search of "good things to eat," finding their grub at roadside diners, local BBQ contests, and mom-and-pop operations. In this book they have compiled fifty-one recipes for chili, "this country's one truly shared national food." Each state is represented with its own unique offerings: the recipes are easy to follow and the results stupendous. Chili Nation is required cooking for anyone who loves that taste of Americana!

by Marguerite Yourcenar
In one of his stories, Jorge Luis Borges contemplates the mystical and unforgettable properties of a single coin. He imagines its former owners and muses on the thought that every piece of money entails such illustrious connotations as these, seemed to me of huge, though inexplicable, importance.
These thoughts might also have crossed the mind of Marguerite Yourcenar. A Coin in Nine Hands recounts the fortunes of nine Italians who alternately receive and spend a common ten-lira piece. Her novel unfolds in a spiral & the characters are related in ways that transcend the passing of the coin, and we continually return to the central figures of the tale. The forces of anarchy, fascism, poverty, religion, and love collide in this elegant story set in 1933. As always, Yourcenar's writing is poetic and beautiful.

Dean & DeLuca Cookbook, by David Rosengarten with Joel Dean and Giorgio DeLuca (Click here for the or the ).
This cookbook is original and culinarily inspiring, amazingly comprehensive, and packed with delicious recipes. The book's concept is actually a return to classics, both new and old. Thus recipes for meatloaf and Italian-American lasagna sit side by side with instructions for pad thai and "Stacked Salade Niçoise with Seared Fresh Tuna" (although a more traditional salade niçoise recipe is also included). Everything presented has apparently been tested thoroughly. You'll be amazed at the dishes that come out of your kitchen (I definitely was). Don't be put off by the lack of pictures; this may very well become your favorite food reference.

by Marguerite Yourcenar
This is a novel of passion and beauty. Through the imagined writings of Hadrian, an erudite, yet remarkably capable Roman emperor, Yourcenar recounts his almost religious devotion to his lover, his lifelong search for knowledge and experience, and his taste for absolute power. Memoirs is the culmination of decades of research, but it is Hadrian's inner musings, not his public life, that serve as the focus of this amazing work. Yourcenar herself quotes Flaubert: "Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone." This novel is her portrayal of "that man existing alone and yet closely bound with all being."

by Italo Calvino
This slim novel is an elegant marriage of fiction and essay. In an age when Tartars commanded a vast Asian empire, Calvino's narrator Marco Polo describes to the Kublai Khan his travels among a fantastic array of imaginary cities. Each city is distilled into a single paradigm, state of mind, or possibility. Throughout the novel Calvino returns to the on-going conversation between the Italian explorer and the melancholic Khan, whose empire is vast beyond his own comprehension. This work is rich in symbol and imagination.

by Truman Capote
Perhaps the first "true crime" novel in this country, Capote's gripping account is certainly the best, easily transcending that genre's boundaries. The book grabs you with its simple yet compelling prose, relying on strong writing rather than heavy melodrama. Capote remains strangely sympathetic to both sides of the story. Read it as nothing more than a fascinating story or delve into the heart of random mass homicide, American style. Incredibly rewarding either way.

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