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BREAD OF THREE RIVERS

Name: BREAD OF THREE RIVERS
Author: Sara Mansfield Taber
ISBN: 0-8070-7238-9

THE STORY OF A FRENCH LOAF

by Sara Mansfield Taber ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 16, 2001

Informative, comprehensive—but burdened by gee-whiz insights into the ways of the world.

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An American writer details her infatuation with French bread, in a part-reportage and part-earnest attempt to understand national differences and obsessions.

When her husband’s job transplanted them from Minnesota to Washington, D.C., Taber, the mother of two young children, found herself in a place that prized work more than community and free time. She took long drives to find bakeries that made good French bread and tried making loaves on her own, but that didn’t lessen her feelings of loneliness. She decided to write the story of a loaf of French bread. She would go to France and there find all that was missing in her American life: a nourishing community, balanced lives, and more time; France, unlike the US, would be “the repository of quality.” So Taber travels to the village of Blain in Brittany, where she meets Gold Medal baker Jean-Claude Choquet. She learns how bread is made, the process still lengthy and energy-consuming although it has been helped by the modern invention of a cooling chamber in which the dough can be left to rise for longer periods than in the past. Taber goes to the marshes of Guerande, where the salt Choquet uses is harvested from the sea in an elaborate process involving channels and a sequence of pans. At a mill she learns that the French have six categories of flour. Since they fortify their bread flour with American wheat, she next visits an organic wheat farmer, then the water company that serves Blain, and finally the yeast manufacturer, whose largest client is China. The author is chagrined to learn that the French enjoy the convenience of American sandwich loaves and McDonald’s fast food; she also discovers that all the people she meets work as hard and as long as any Washington bureaucrat.

Informative, comprehensive—but burdened by gee-whiz insights into the ways of the world.

Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2001

ISBN: 0-8070-7238-9

Page Count: 258

Publisher: Beacon Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.