Biography & Autobiography : Historical

Michael Ruhlman has enjoyed a long love affair with cooking and food. His explorations of kitchens and the professionals who call them home led Anthony Bourdain to call him ''the greatest living writer on the subject of chefs—and on the business of preparing food.'' But even his vast experience couldn't have prepared him for the profound shift that has occurred in the chef's place in society. Beginning at Per Se, the newest and most expensive of Manhattan's four-star restaurants, Ruhlman takes readers into some of America's most illustrious—and most innovative—kitchens. Throughout his travels, he seeks new trends and phenomena, like Las Vegas's recent elevation to the country's food Gomorrah with the addition of Picasso and Aureole to the Strip's already formidable selection, and returns to legendary haunts like The French Laundry, Le Bernardin, and Café Gray to see what's changed. A dispatch from a new world where chefs are celebrities and culinary school classes are burgeoning, The Reach of a Chef looks at the state of professional cooking in the post-Child, Food Network era. In the end, an audience who loves to talk about, read about, and dine in the finest restaurants in America gets an in-the-trenches look at the professionals whose very life's work is to feed us. more...

Price: $16.00

Gala opera evenings. Sudden wealth and fame. Dangerous undercover missions into the heart of Nazi Germany. Standing up to the perils of the Blitz. No one would have predicted such glamorous and daring lives for Ida and Louise Cook--two decidedly ordinary Englishwomen who came of age between the wars and seemed destined never to stray from their quiet London suburb and comfortable civil service jobs. But in 1923 a chance hearing of an aria from Madame Butterfly sparked a passion in the sisters that became a vehicle for both their greatest happiness and the rescue of dozens of Jews facing persecution and death. Safe Passage is one of the most unusual and inspiring accounts to come out of the cataclysm of World War II. First published in 1950, Ida's memoir of the adventures she and Louise shared remains as fresh, vital and entertaining as the woman who wrote it. The Cook sisters' zest for life and genuine "goodness" shines through every page and explains why the leading opera singers of their day befriended and loved them. Even when Ida began to earn thousands as a successful romance novelist, the sisters never departed from their homespun virtues of thrift, hard work, self-sacrifice and unwavering moral conviction. They sewed their own clothes, traveled third class, bought the cheapest tickets during opera season and directed every spare resource, as well as their own considerable courage and ingenuity, toward saving as many people as they could from Hitler's death camps. Uplifting and utterly charming, Safe Passage is moving testimony to all that can be achieved when conscience and compassion are applied to a collapsing world. more...

Price: $12.55

The Santa Anna is an intelligent, dynamic, yet reluctant leader, ingeniously deceptive at times, courageous and patriotic at others. This book provides a picture of Santa Anna's life, with new insights into his activities in his bailiwick of Veracruz and in his numerous military engagements. more...

Price: $45.00

Little is known about Ann Hathaway, the wife of England's greatest playwright; a great deal, none of it complimentary, has been assumed. The omission of her name from Shakespeare's will has been interpreted as evidence that she was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake from which Shakespeare did well to distance himself. While Shakespeare is above all the poet of marriage—repeatedly in his plays, constant wives redeem unjust and deluded husbands—scholars persist in positing the worst about the writer's own spouse. In Shakespeare's Wife , Germaine Greer boldly breaks new ground, combining literary-historical techniques with documentary evidence about life in Stratford, to reset the story of Shakespeare's marriage in its social context. With deep insight and intelligence, she offers daring and thoughtful new theories about the farmer's daughter who married England's greatest poet, painting a vivid portrait of a remarkable woman. A passionate and perceptive work of first-rate scholarship that reclaims this maligned figure from generations of scholarly neglect and misogyny, Shakespeare's Wife poses bold questions and opens new fields of investigation and research. more...

Price: $19.95

''Now that I am seventy years of age, it is my prerogative to offer a summing up,'' says Meron Benvenisti, internationally known author and columnist, Jerusalem native, and scion of Israel's founders. Born in Palestine in 1934 to a Sephardic father and an Ashkenazi mother, Benvenisti has enjoyed an unusual vantage point from which to consider his homeland's conflicts and controversies. Throughout his long and provocative career as scholar, elected official, and respected journalist, he has remained intimately involved with Israel's social and political development. Part memoir and part political polemic, Son of the Cypresses threads Benvenisti's own story through the story of Israel. The result is a vivid, sharply drawn eyewitness account of pre-state Jerusalem and Israel's early years. He memorably sets the scene by recalling his father's emotional journey from Jewish Salonika in 1913 to Palestine, with all its attendant euphoria and frustration, and his father's pioneer dedication to inculcating Israeli youth with a ''native's'' attachment to the homeland. In describing the colorful and lively Jerusalem in which he grew up, Benvenisti recalls the many challenges faced by new Jewish immigrants, who found themselves not only in conflict with the Arab population but also with each other as Sephardim and Ashkenazim. He revisits his own public disagreements with both Zionists and Palestinians and shares indelible memories such as his boyhood experiences of the 1948 War. In remembering his life as an Israeli sabra, Benvenisti offers a vivid record of the historical roots of the conflict that persists today. more...

Price: $24.50