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by joanna brichetto
by robert Weibezahl
A foodie A-to-Z guide If we told you that this book contains everything from “aamsul” to “zwieback,” with “kway teow” at the exact midpoint, would you be able to guess what it is about? Give up? Are you subliminally feeling your mouth start to water? Once you crack open the Fifth Edition of The New Food Lover’s Companion (Barron’s, $16.99, 928 pages, ISBN 9781438001630), you’ll be dashing to your nearest grocery store or international market to seek out that aamsul (a kiwi-size fruit used in curries) or find zwieback, a bread that is baked and then toasted until it gets just the right crispiness and palatability. Compilers Sharon Tyler
morale? How—for the sake of goodness, sanity and your family—will you ever learn to leave your work at the office? If the Martins had been around dispensing their wisdom in Slough or Scranton, there never would have been the dysfunctional workplaces we see in either uncomfortably hilarious version of “The Office.” As the 21st century accelerates through its first quarter, the personal and the professional have become more intertwined than ever before. Miss Manners is still there, right when we need her most, to help us negotiate a peaceable truce.
Top Pick in Lifestyles
Herbst and Ron Herbst have fulfilled the mission of Barron’s Educational Series, of which this volume is the latest addition. Beyond the comprehensive A-to-Z listings extends a 60page appendix filled with everything any foodie would ever need to know, from the “Boiling Point of Water at Various Altitudes” to two-page spreads explaining the retail cuts of beef, lamb, pork and veal. Buy the book and cross the bridge over the noodle kway teow.
r e a d m o r e at b o o k pa g e . c o m
Office wisdom
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The workplace is becoming a place where it’s taking more and more work just to make it through the day, to survive without making some possibly job-threatening faux pas. Miss Manners (aka Judith Martin) comes to the rescue! In Miss Manners Minds Your Business (Norton, $25.95, 288 pages, ISBN 9780393081367), Judith and her son Nicholas Ivor Martin—a successful business executive—painstakingly traverse 15 chapters of potential nightmares at the office, sharing and brilliantly answering hundreds of letters from perplexed workers at every level of the professional spectrum. How can you tell off your unreasonable boss without getting fired? How should you critique your employees without destroying their
The publisher Lonely Planet has a long track record of informing and enchanting travelers with guides that make it almost impossible to wait for the flight date. Now, the company has pulled out all the stops with 1000 Ultimate Adventures, a book that challenges the fundamentally fearless traveler to go that extra frequent-flyer mile, live the dream, take the risk and finally do that extremely exciting thing in that wildly remote place. The thematic organization of the book (ranging from “Scariest Animal Encounters” to “Hair-Raising Road Trips”) will appeal to the growing audience for those TV shows that reveal the natural world to be a place for bottomless danger, endless surprise and just the right backpack. Don’t want to drive down the narrow Troll’s Road in Norway, every moment inches away from toppling over the cliff? Well, the magnificent photograph of it (among dozens of such glories in the book) is the next best—and much safer—option for armchair travelers.
1000 Ultimate adventures Lonely Planet $22.99, 352 pages ISBN 9781743217191
travel
The adventures of Mark Twain, continued Is Mark Twain the most beloved of all American writers? It would be hard to say for sure, but one measure of readers’ abiding affection for Samuel L. Clemens is the astounding success of the first volume of his autobiography. Published in 2010, 100 years after his death as he stipulated, it leapt immediately onto bestseller lists—an impressive achievement for a weighty tome from a university press with nearly as many pages of explanatory notes as primary source material. Now, volume two of “The Complete and Authoritative Edition” of the Autobiography of Mark Twain has been compiled by the Mark Twain Project of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, the world’s largest archive of materials by the iconic writer. While the first covered a broader range of years—1870 to 1905—this book is more narrowly circumscribed between April 1906 and February 1907. Clemens had made many false starts at an autobiography through the years, but in January of ’06 he began almost daily dictations to stenographer Josephine S. Hobby with an eye toward preserving his story for posterity. As one might expect, these dictations do not comprise a straightforward, chronological account of the writer’s life, but are marked by the circuitous digressions, laced with sardonic humor, that make Clemens, well, Twain. There is plenty of reminiscence, to be sure, but there is an equal amount of commentary about political and social trends of the day. News events, such as the San Francisco earthquake, spark memories of Clemens’ colorful past (he was in the City by the Bay during an earlier trembler in 1865), and he writes of encounters with famous contemporaries from Bret Harte (“Harte owed me fifteen hundred dollars at that time; later he owed me three thousand. He offered me his note, but I was not keeping a museum, and did not take it.”) to Helen Keller (“the eighth wonder of the world”). He delights in knowing that a letter of General Grant’s sold at auction for “something short of eighteen dollars,” while one of his own sold for $43.
The riches are manifold. Who but Twain, for instance, could write a few thousand words on the supremacy of the housefly? On reporting an outbreak of simplified spelling in ancient Egypt, he claims, “The Simplifiers had risen in revolt against the hieroglyphics.” He spoofs such fads as phrenology and palm reading, and discourses on more serious subjects, too, such as the need for international copyright. In an entry near the close of this volume he declares, “Last week I started a club. The membership is limited to four men; its name is The Human Race. . . . Whenever the human race assembles to a number exceeding four, it cannot stand free speech.” This is vintage Twain—timeless, and still germane. And here he is “uncensored,” too, for he withheld the right to publish this material for a century precisely so that he could write unfettered. He was confident enough in his own genius (or at least his own opinions) to know that people would still want to read him 100 years on. (How many writers can hope for that?) Perhaps Mr. Clemens was being a bit disingenuous when he wrote, “From the beginning of time, philosophers of all breeds and shades have been beguiled by the persuasions of man’s bulkiest attribute, vanity, into believing that a human being can originate a thought in his own head. I suppose I am the only person who knows he can’t.” For there is no arguing that this American master originated many a thought that still reverberates today. And that’s why we still find him on the bestseller lists.
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 By Mark Twain
Edited by Benjamin Griffin, Harriet Elinor Smith, et al. University of California Press $45, 776 pages ISBN 9780520272781
AUTOBIOGRAPHY