
Mary Roach - Gulp

"America’s funniest science writer" (Washington Post) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal that Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal ($26.95) explores is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions inspired by our insides are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff, and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find names for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In Roach's newest work, we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks — or has the courage — to ask. And we go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a bacteria transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal.

With Roach as our insatiably curious guide, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists (one is a certain Dr. McNaught, who gleefully sets fire to a young man’s belch), Eskimos (with whom Roach eats the eye of an Arctic char) and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), nuns, terrorists (who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts), scammers and schemers, and so we learn about ourselves.

Like all of Roach’s books, this one is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies.

Mary Roach is the author of four previous books: Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Her writing has appeared in Outside, Wired, National Geographic, and the New York Times Magazine, among others. She lives in Oakland, California.

 

Location: 
Street:
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
City:
Corte Madera
,
Postal Code:
94925
$26.95
ISBN-13: 9780393081572
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 4/2013

Michelle Theall - Teaching the Cat to Sit

From the time she was born, Michelle Theall knew she was different. Coming of age in the Texas Bible Belt, a place where it was unacceptable to be gay, Theall found herself at odds with her strict Roman Catholic parents, bullied by her classmates, abandoned by her evangelical best friend, and kicked out of Christian organizations that claimed to embrace her—all before she’d ever held a girl’s hand. Shame and her longing for her mother’s acceptance led her to deny her feelings and eventually run away to a remote stretch of mountains in Colorado. There, she made her home on an elk migration path facing the Continental Divide, speaking to God every day, but rarely seeing another human being.

At forty-three years of age and seemingly settled in her decision to live life openly as a gay woman, Theall and her partner attempt to have their son baptized into the Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in the liberal town of Boulder, Colorado. Her quest to have her son accepted into the Church leads to a battle with Sacred Heart and with her mother, that leaves her questioning everything she thought she knew about the bonds of family and faith. And she realizes that in order to be a good mother, she may have to be a bad daughter. Teaching the Cat to Sit: A Memoir ($24.99) examines the modern roles of motherhood and religion, and demonstrates that our infinite capacity to love has the power to shape us all.

Michelle Theall is the author of two health books, and her syndicated health and fitness column ran with McClatchy Tribune for several years. She has appeared on NBC Today, MSNBC, The Travel Channel, and the Fox Sports Network, and she garnered two prestigious Folio Awards for her work with Women’s Adventure magazine. Theall won two awards of excellence from the North American Travel Journalists’ Association for her feature and editorial writing. Michelle currently teaches writing and photography at the Creative Conferences. Her feature essay, All That’s Left Is God, earned a 2011 GLAAD Media Award nomination and inspired this book.

 

Location: 
Street:
1 Ferry Building
City:
San Francisco
,
Postal Code:
94111
$24.99
ISBN-13: 9781451697292
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Gallery Books, 8/2013

Kristin Ohlson - The Soil Will Save Us

Co- Sponsored by CUESA

This event will take place in the Public Commission Hearing Room at the San Francisco Ferry Building

Thousands of years of poor farming and ranching practices—and, especially, modern industrial agriculture—have led to the loss of up to 80 percent of carbon from the world’s soils. That carbon is now floating in the atmosphere, and even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, it would continue warming the planet. In The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet ($21.99), journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming.

As the granddaughter of farmers and the daughter of avid gardeners, Ohlson has long had an appreciation for the soil. A chance conversation with a local chef led her to the crossroads of science, farming, food, and environmentalism. And, she discovered the only significant way to remove carbon dioxide from the air—an ecological approach that tends to plants, animals, and the vast population of underground microorganisms that fix carbon in the soil. Ohlson introduces the visionaries—scientists, farmers, ranchers, and landscapers—who are figuring out how to build healthy soil, which solves myriad problems: drought, erosion, air and water pollution, and food quality, as well as climate change. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.

Kristin Ohlson is a writer based in Portland, OR. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Salon, Discover, and more. Her article about burning coal mines was collected in Best American Science Writing 2011. She is also the author of Stalking the Divine, which won the American Society of Journalists and Authors’ 2004 Best Nonfiction Book award, and coauthor of New York Times bestseller Kabul Beauty School.

Location: 
Street:
1 Ferry Building
City:
San Francisco
,
Postal Code:
94111
$23.99
ISBN-13: 9781609615543
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Rodale Books, 3/2014

Colman Andrews - My Usual Table

From food writer, James Beard award-winning cookbook author, and co-founder of Saveur magazine, Colman Andrews, comes My Usual Table: A Life in Restaurants ($25.99), a vivid memoir of a life lived in food. From his Hollywood childhood through his days in the music business, his first forays into restaurant reviewing, and his ever-evolving career as a food writer and magazine editor, Andrews has seen the world mostly from the dining room. In his newest work, he interweaves his own story with intimate tales of the seminal restaurants and the great chefs and restaurateurs of our time who have forever transformed the way we eat, cook, and feel about food.

In sixteen chapters, each anchored by the story of his love affair with a cherished restaurant, Andrews evokes the unforgettable meals he has eaten over a lifetime, the remarkable people with whom he has shared them, and traces the evolution of our food culture. As Andrews began traveling for his career, he spent hours in the family run cafés of Paris and Rome. The timeless dishes so common on their menus, focused on local and seasonal ingredients, would not only come to profoundly influence Andrews’ palate, but also transform the American foodscape forever.

Colman Andrews co-founded Saveur and was its editor-in-chief from 2002 to 2006. After leaving the magazine, he became the restaurant columnist for Gourmet and is currently the editorial director of The Daily Meal, a food and wine mega-site. A native of Los Angeles, he holds degrees in history and philosophy from UCLA, and was a restaurant reviewer and restaurant news columnist for the Los Angeles Times. The recipient of eight James Beard awards, Andrews is the co-author and co-editor of three Saveur cookbooks and seven of his own books on food.

Location: 
Street:
1 Ferry Building
City:
San Francisco
,
Postal Code:
94111
$25.99
ISBN-13: 9780062136473
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Ecco Press, 3/2014

Ann Brashares - The Here and Now

A special event for teens!

Ann Brashares’ first novel for teens since The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Here and Now ($18.99), is about a girl from the future who might be able to save the world... if she lets go of the one thing she’s found to hold on to.

Meet seventeen-year-old Prenna James, who immigrated to New York when she was twelve. Except Prenna didn’t come from a different country. She came from a different time—a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins.
 
Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set of rules: never reveal where they’re from, never interfere with history, and never, ever be intimate with anyone outside their community. Prenna does as she’s told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage the earth. But everything changes when she falls for Ethan Jarves.

Ann Brashares is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, 3 Willows, The Last Summer (of You & Me), and My Name Is Memory. She lives in New York City with her husband and their four children.
 

 

Location: 
Street:
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
City:
Corte Madera
,
Postal Code:
94925
Country:
United States

The Here and Now (Hardcover)

$18.99
ISBN-13: 9780385736800
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Delacorte Press, 4/2014

Emma Donoghue - Frog Music

Emma Donoghue's explosive new novel is based on an unsolved murder in 1876 San Francisco. The city is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heatwave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman called Jenny Bonnet is shot dead. The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice--if he doesn't track her down first.

The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts.

In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music ($27.00), digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other.

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an Irish emigrant twice over: she spent eight years in Cambridge doing a PhD in eighteenth-century literature before moving to London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner and their two children. She also migrates between genres, writing literary history, biography, stage and radio plays as well as fairy tales and short stories. She is best known for her novels, which range from the historical (Slammerkin, Life Mask, Landing, The Sealed Letter) to the contemporary (Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing). Her international bestseller Room was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and was a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes.

 

 

Location: 
Street:
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
City:
Corte Madera
,
Postal Code:
94925

Frog Music (Hardcover)

$27.00
ISBN-13: 9780316324687
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Little, Brown and Company, 4/2014



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