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Author: LARA SCHWARTZ
âTry to Love the Questionsâ gives college students a framework for understanding and practicing dialog across difference in and out of the classroom.
This invaluable guide explores the challenges facing students as they prepare to listen, speak, and learn in a college community and encourages students and faculty alike to consider inclusive, respectful communication as a skillânot as a limitation on freedom.
âThe First King of Englandâ is a foundational biography of Ăthelstan (d. 939), the early medieval king whose territorial conquests and shrewd statesmanship united the peoples, languages, and cultures that would come to be known as the âKingdom of the English.â In this panoramic work, David Woodman blends masterful storytelling with the latest scholarship to paint a multifaceted portrait of this immensely important but neglected figure, a man celebrated in his day as much for his benevolence, piety, and love of learning as he was for his ambitious reign.
In Ina Gartenâs 2024 memoir, âBe Ready When the Luck Happens,â she traces her journey from a lonely childhood in Connecticut to her rise as a popular Food Network darling.
Known as the warm, unflappable âBarefoot Contessa,â Garten reveals a complicated past â but not always in ways that fully savor the readerâs attention.
Viewers of her cooking show, by the same name, know Jeffrey E. Garten as her dutiful husband who emerges at the end of each episode to sample her dishes.
I grew up watching her program and admiring the recipes she created. And while it was cute at first, I admittedly felt like the Jeffrey cameos were my least favorite part.
Although their little chitchats were the most consistent part in her signature program, it felt slightly forced. Similarly, in the memoir, the frequent returns to him â and the constant referral to his Ivy League education â begin as intriguing but quickly become repetitive and tedious.
Before her beloved Jeffrey was in the picture, she writes candidly about her childhood as Ina Rosenberg, under the rule of a strict doctor father and controlling dietitian mother, noting that she and her older brother âeach felt like an only child.â
She stated how she always loved preparing food, but her parents did not support this passion. Instead, her role as a young person was to study â even a meal with family was filled with geography quizzes and she couldnât fully enjoy the food.
These passages offer insights into her desire to escape that monotone existence and indulge in carving her own path, like she would later carve a chicken on her show.
Garten then goes, once again, into excruciating detail about meeting Jeffrey in the 1960s and being courted by him while in college. As she moved into adulthood, they were married in 1968 and she quickly adopted his last name and seemingly became fully immersed in all things related to him.
While her devotion was charming at first, it also highlighted a detachment from her former life and identity, leaving readers with skimpy glimpses of Ina Rosenberg but mostly following the orbit of her chasing her husbandâs world and gaze.
Garten also mentions her early years working in Washington, D.C., before abruptly leaving it on a whim to buy a small food shop in the Hamptons, the origins of the Barefoot Contessa brand â something her parents disapproved of.
Jeffrey, of course, was ever supportive and they made that long-distance marriage, at the time, work. Her account of building the shop into a thriving business is easily the most compelling section of âBe Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir.â Wish we lingered there in more pages.
To me, the book felt like the main focus was her distaste for her late parents and her utter devotion to Jeffrey, with Ina Garten herself as a side dish in her own story.
In âWe the People,â Harvard professor of history and law Jill Lepore offers a sweeping, lyrical, and democratic constitutional history, telling the stories of generations of Americans who have attempted everything from abolishing the Electoral College to guaranteeing environmental rights.
Lepore argues that the framers never intended for the Constitution to be kept, like a butterfly, under glass, but instead expected that future generations would be forever tinkering with it, improving the machinery of government.
In this startlingly original, deeply irreverent cultural history, Ruby Tandohâs âAll Consumingâ traces how our culinary tastes have been transformed; how theyâve been pulled into supermarket aisles and seduced by Michelin stars, transfixed by Top Chefs and shaped by fads.
âAll Consumingâ is a deep dive into the social, economic, cultural, legislative, and demographic forces that have reshaped our relationship with food.
