Ranking alongside Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as a novel that has galvanized public opinion, The Jungle tells the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a young immigrant who came to the New World to find a better life. Instead, he is confronted with the horrors of the slaughterhouses, barbarous working conditions, crushing poverty, disease, and despair.

Upton Sinclair vividly depicted factory life in Chicago in the first years of the twentieth century, and the harrowing scenes he related aroused the indignation of the public and forced a government investigation that led to the passage of pure food laws. A hundred years later, The Jungle continues to pack the same emotional power it did when it was first published.

Paperback.

Laura Ingalls's story begins in 1871 in a little log cabin on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin. Four-year-old Laura lives in the little house with her Pa, her Ma, her sisters Mary and Carrie, and their trusty dog, Jack.

Pioneer life is sometimes hard, since the family must grow or catch all their own food as they get ready for the cold winter. But it is also exciting as Laura and her folks celebrate Christmas with homemade toys and treats, do the spring planting, bring in the harvest, and make their first trip into town. And every night they are safe and warm in their little house, with the happy sound of Pa's fiddle sending Laura and her sisters off to sleep.

Paperback. Comes with fiddle charm!

Share the unsurpassed pleasures of discovering, cooking, and eating good, simple food with this beloved book. Equal parts cookbook and memoir, Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking combines her insightful, good-humored writing style with her lifelong passion for wonderful cuisine in essays such as Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, Repulsive Dinners: A Memoir, and Stuffed Breast of Veal: A Bad Idea. Home Cooking is truly a feast for the body and soul.

Whether acclaimed food writer Madhur Jaffrey was climbing the mango trees in her grandparents' orchard in Delhi or picnicking in the Himalayan foothills on meatballs stuffed with raisins and mint, tucked into freshly baked spiced pooris, today these childhood pleasures evoke for her the tastes and textures of growing up.

This memoir is both an enormously appealing account of an unusual childhood and a testament to the power of food to prompt memory, vividly bringing to life a lost time and place. Included here are recipes for more than thirty delicious dishes recovered from Jaffrey's childhood.

In 1971, it was nearly impossible to find a cappuccino or a croissant in this country, and goat cheese and mesclun were virtually unheard of. Then a Francophile named Alice Waters and her motley coterie of dreamers turned an old stucco house in Berkeley into the birthplace of a new food culture _ one that incorporated fresh, local ingredients and progressive ideas in a venue reminscent of a Marseille waterfront tavern. It was called Chez Panisse and Waters would eventually be called the mother of american cooking. Based on unprecedented access to Waters and her inner circle, this authorized biography offers an intimate portrait of the maverick who reeducated the American palate.

Rarely has a man defined the spirit of an age as well as Alexis Soyer, popular hero of the Crimean War. Soyer designed the famous kitchens of the Reform Club, which he filled with ingenious inventions such as the gas stove. He devised the sauces that would make household names of Mr. Crosse and Mr. Blackwell and he set up revolutionary soup kitchens during the Irish potato famine. Later in his career, he travelled to the Crimea where he transformed army catering, saving many soldiers from starvation. Yet this heroic figure was also a secret bigamist and alcoholic who died penniless and dropped completely from public view after his untimely death. Today the grave of one of the most enigmatic and extraordinary figures of the Victorian age lies neglected in Kensal Green cemetery.