Year End Round Up of Best Books

End of year best-of lists are everywhere this month. We've had a great year and are very proud of the lists our books have landed on thus far. Help us celebrate another great year in publishing!

Holiday shopping note: Order by next Thursday, December 17, to guarantee domestic delivery by December 25.

End of Year Round Up

“Best Of” or “Gifts” Lists

New York Times Sunday Book Review Holiday issue

The Jemima Code
Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks
By Toni Tipton-Martin

"The Jemima Code is no ordinary book. It’s a heaping helping, a long overdue acknowledgment of African-Americans who have toiled in this field since the country’s beginnings. With eloquence and urgency, Tipton-Martin makes the case that without the people of the African diaspora not only would America’s food be different, so would its culinary conversation." 

—The New York Times Book Review

Variations on a Rectangle
Thirty Years of Graphic Design from Texas Monthly to Pentagram
By DJ Stout

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The best photography books of 2015

Frame
A Retrospective
By Mark Cohen 

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NPR, Best Books 2015

The Jemima Code
Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks
By Toni Tipton-Martin

"[The Jemima Code is] that rare coffee table book that serves up important history and compelling imagery in digestible, bite-size chunks that still stick to your ribs." 

—Michel Martin, NPR's Best Books of 2015

Don’t Suck Don’t Die
Giving Up Vic Chesnutt
By Kristin Hersh

"Don't Suck, Don't Die is not only one of the best books of the year, it's one of the most beautiful rock memoirs ever written. Hersh is as stunningly talented an author as she is a musician, and her portrayal of Chesnutt is perfectly done." 

—NPR's Best Books of 2015

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Wall Street Journal, Best Books for Photography Lovers 2015

Frame
A Retrospective
By Mark Cohen 

"Mr. Cohen’s pictures are remarkable." 

—The Wall Street Journal

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American Photo, Best Books 2015

Frame
A Retrospective
By Mark Cohen

Political Abstraction
By Ralph Gibson

Wall Street Journal :: Colonel Sanders and the American Dream

The American Way of Eating
Harlan Sanders and Clarence Birdseye, just like today's locavores, saw a meal as a way to improve people's lives
By Henry Allen

Colonel Sanders and the American Dream

by Josh Ozersky

Buy It Now

 Fine, fast and frozen: three food groups that changed America after World War II.

Let's take them in order, by contemplating the revolutionaries chronicled in three biographies:

First, there is Craig Claiborne, the New York Times columnist who taught us how to know good from bad veal fricandeau and how to bedizen our kitchens with copper pots from France. Second, Colonel Harlan Sanders, a founding father of fast food—his was Kentucky Fried Chicken and he sold it by the bucket.

Third, Clarence Birdseye, the frozen-food man who believed in a future built by industry, an inventor who gave us seafood far from the sea and fruits and vegetables far out of season. Birdseye and Sanders aimed at the masses. Claiborne, however, addressed the emerging classes known variously as creative, culture-bearing and knowledge, along with the rich, who could afford to eat Henri Soulé's food at Claiborne's beloved Pavillon in Manhattan before it closed.

During a life chronicled by Thomas McNamee in an insouciant biography called "The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat," Claiborne joined with heros of the table such as M.F.K. Fisher, James Beard, Julia Child and Alice Waters to create a new kind of gourmet or gourmand—what we now call the foodie.

There had once been gourmet splendor in hotels and railroad dining cars for the rich in America, but it faded with the Depression and the decline of railroad travel. After the war, new suburban lifestyles and the end of servants for all but the rich brought us instant everything—bricks of Birds Eye frozen spinach to be heated and served and Betty Crocker cake mixes.

Diners looking for the Big Meal went to prime-rib or lobster joints with little waterfalls out back, and the popover was the pinnacle of pastry. Ultimate praise was "you can't eat it all," as diners patted their stomachs and shuffled out to Buick station wagons monogrammed with yachting flags. They had never heard of heirloom tomatoes or extra-virgin olive oil. They cooked from Peg Bracken's "I Hate to Cook Book" in linoleum kitchens. They drank milk with dinner.

Read the full article at wsj.com »

Wall Street Journal :: Greenback Planet

Greenback Planet

By H. W. Brands
Buy It Now

How the Dollar Rules by Fiat
How did the dollar become the world's principal currency and what is its future?

The Founders defined the dollar as a weight of gold or silver. We moderns have undefined and disembodied it. The 21st-century greenback is neither connected to nor—as they say on Wall Street—collateralized by anything tangible. You can materialize it on a computer, like a tweet.

"Greenback Planet" is the story of this amazing monetary transformation. The narrative begins in the 18th century and races to the present, pausing to catch its breath at some of the great American monetary landmarks: Andrew Jackson's veto, in 1832, of legislation rechartering a predecessor to the Federal Reserve; Abraham Lincoln's recourse to greenbacks, or fiat currency, to finance the Civil War; resumption of the gold standard in 1879, with which it once more became possible to exchange gold for paper and vice-versa at a fixed and statutory rate; J.P. Morgan quelling the Panic of 1907; the Federal Reserve not quelling, never mind preventing, the Great Depression; the crazy-quilt monetary improvisations of the 1930s; the halfway gold dollar of the post-World War II era; and the creation, in 1971, of the pure paper (later digital) model of today.

Mr. Brands is a paper-money man, though the subtitle of his book—"How the Dollar Conquered the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It"—seems to betray some reservations. It betrays, as well, the author's zest for provocation. The American currency, he extravagantly claims, has "made America rich," "defeated communism" and "knitted the planet into a single economy more fully than any currency before." I would say that enterprise made America rich and that communism, rotten from the start, defeated itself, with a timely push from Ronald Reagan. And I would say that the British pound "knit" the world economy together long before the birth of Ben Bernanke, while the golden solidus of ancient Byzantium circulated as global money ages before the reign of Queen Victoria. Without an over-scrupulous regard for history, the historical narrative zips along.

Mr. Brands has written biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. He has written diplomatic history, political history and business history. Some academics—"one book men," as Samuel Flagg Bemis, the prolific Yale diplomatic historian, contemptuously called them—write hardly at all. Mr. Brands, a history professor at the University of Texas, seems to do nothing but.

Read the full review at wsj.com »

Wall Street Journal :: Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins

Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins

By Ellen Sweets
Buy It Now

Giving the Dish
By F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal

Although known as a fiery Texan newspaper columnist, the late Molly Ivins was also a formidable cook. Ellen Sweets, her fellow reporter and kitchen intimate, reveals the culinary side of the Lone Star legend in "Stirring It Up With Molly Ivins: A Memoir With Recipes" (University of Texas Press, $20). A whiz with a whisk and French cuisine connoisseur, Ms. Ivins honed her skills as the consummate dinner-party host. Ms. Sweets's anecdotes about the cast of characters who round-tabled Ms. Ivins's home are as satisfying as the Texas pistol's concoctions. No food snob, however, she was equally content to whip up a Garbage Gumbo as a duck a l'orange.

Read More at wsj.com »

Cowboys & Indians :: Crazy from the Heat

Crazy from the Heat

by James H. Evans

Buy It Now

A Bold Look At Big Bend

No one has ever captured the vicious wonders of the Big Bend area of Texas quite like James H. Evans. Deciding that he wanted to dedicate his life to the region, the photographer moved to Marathon, Texas, almost 23 years ago. He was so enthralled by the surrounding landscapes, wildlife, and people that he knew he could make it his lifework.

Two decades later, Evans is still just as inspired. In his latest photography book, Crazy from the Heat, he presents his greatest ode to Big Bend, from its heavenly views to its hellish conditions. In the afterword, Evans writes, “I love Big Bend. I love the desert. I love the heat. I love the mountains. I love seeing whole storm systems form, build, and dissipate. I love knowing what phase the moon is in, and seeing the stars and constellations, and the feeling that I am living on a planet. I love seeing wild animals and trying to communicate with them.”

Evans also mentions one of the most difficult problems with photographing Big Bend: “A friend of mine said, ‘There are thirty pictures of the park, and everybody takes them.’ ” And anyone who has looked through tourism books about the area can agree. However, upon first opening this book it becomes immediately obvious that it is no travel guide. Paging through the collection, you see unique and wholly original images of geographical phenomenon, Chihuahua dog races, spiked amphibians, venomous crawlers and slitherers, cowboys, storefronts, artists, and animal carcasses. You undergo a range of emotions — from shock to bewilderment to awe to grief. Combined, all the images create an outstanding glimpse at a surreal and savage world.

Read More »