A thoughtful, unique cookbook with a cherry on top.
A self-taught baker brings an anonymous Depression-era cookbook up to date, with a history lesson for dessert.
Simpson, a nurse and home baker from Dixie, Georgia, was scouring eBay for old cookbooks when she found a handwritten book of dessert recipes from 1932. A “nail-biting bidding war” and $75 later, the cookbook was hers, but recreating the Bundt cakes, tortes, and cookies in its pages wouldn’t prove to be as simple as just following instructions. The recipes were essentially “lists of ingredients” without the cooking times, oven settings, or precise directions included in modern recipes. The author resolved to painstakingly restore the original recipes in her Florida kitchen, converting vague measurements and directions into more precise numbers. The result is a cookbook full of creative curiosities, from “Potato Cake” to “Seafoam Candy” to “Eggless-Butterless-Milkless Cake.” Each recipe is introduced with a short preamble describing the dessert, and many offer details about the delicate process of learning how to make them in a modern kitchen. Along the way, Simpson notes her surprise at what she’s uncovered—despite what contemporary readers might expect, the original recipe book is scant on pies and heavy on butter and eggs for a cookbook penned at the height of the Great Depression. She provides the reader with a short popular history of the era, as well as background information on the use of lard, woodburning ovens, and Bundt pans. While the economic context might strike some readers as oversimplified, the author is a thoughtful and entertaining historian. Simpson’s modernized instructions are clear and well written, despite some unnecessary repetitions (she repeats across several recipes, for instance, that you can thin an icing by adding more liquid, or thicken it by adding more powdered sugar). Her “tips for better baking” make the work approachable to a wide audience of home bakers (several of the more challenging recipes start with instructions on how to “plan ahead”). This is a charming, intriguing book of desserts in which the author invites readers into her process and on her journey through baking history.
A thoughtful, unique cookbook with a cherry on top.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781953555816
Page Count: 156
Publisher: SPARK Publications
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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 Yorkerstaff 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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