by Jonah Raskin and photographed by Paige Green ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2009
A fresh contribution to the public debate on the economics of consumption and the health of American communities.
A lyrical memoir of the relationship among farming, eating and sustaining community in Sonoma County, Calif.
Raskin (Communication Studies/Sonoma State Univ.; The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution, 2008, etc.) begins this chronicle of a year’s exploration into the origins of the local- and slow-food movements in Northern California with the observation that in this region “the feeling of paradise lingers.” While acknowledging the environmental damage that has been wrought on the landscape that most of the world thinks of as wine country, the author credits the area’s small farmers, agriculturalists and vintners with fostering a unique sense of community in what remains, despite its proximity to San Francisco, a predominantly rural area. Raskin’s firsthand approach allowed him to get to know some of the farm’s owners and field laborers. Along the way, he writes about well-known local figures such as Alice Waters and the late M.F.K. Fisher, about pioneers of the organic-farming movement in California, about small community meetings and about the many individuals who make up the area’s farm-to-table network. Though he traveled to New York and London to compare notes, and he references current books on food production in the United States, what distinguishes Raskin’s account is the intensely local approach. Rather than exploring the economics and ethics of farming at a national level, the author provides a finely textured account of how the origins of eating and drinking reveal the nuances of modern community in rural Sonoma County.
A fresh contribution to the public debate on the economics of consumption and the health of American communities.Pub Date: May 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-520-25902-7
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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