Excerpt: 'Fordlandia' July 29, 2009 • Cape Cod cottages, red fire hydrants, swimming pools, and a golf course — the perfect village, built by Henry Ford, right in the heart of the the Amazon jungle of Brazil. Greg Grandin's book (non-fiction, amazingly) documents the history of Ford's vision of the American Jungle Utopia that almost was.
Excerpt: 'Food Of A Younger Land' May 28, 2009 • Food Of A Younger Land is gastronomical time travel tour of American food. Author Mark Kurlansky marks the path with pre-World War II food rituals, recipes, and even poems about food, grouped by regional and rich with revealing history.
Excerpt: 'Brooklyn' May 1, 2009 • Brooklyn, Colm Toibin's exquisite and painful new novel, is more than a chronicle of the loneliness of an Irish immigrant's in New York. Through the main character Eilis Lacey, we really discover a universality of feeling, a longing for home and self that is without borders.
Excerpt: 'The Woman Behind The New Deal' April 16, 2009 • Kirstin Downey's lively new biography of Francis Perkins, President Franklin Roosevelt's controversial pick for Secretary of Labor, is called The Woman Behind the New Deal. Downey's book not only illuminates Perkins' career but also deepens popular understanding of Roosevelt's character.
Excerpt: 'Happens Every Day' March 17, 2009 • For those readers who've endured seismic shifts of the heart, Isabel Gillies's memoir Happens Every Day will hit the spot. For all its sorrow, Gillies gives this tale of a broken marriage a contagious charm and the comfort of lovesick solidarity.
Excerpt: 'The Believers' March 11, 2009 • Zoe Heller's new book, m>m>m>The Believers, dissects the family of an elderly left-wing lawyer and gambles on the readers' intelligence and wit, without much concern for our feelings.