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Saturday, December 19, 2009

What the Dog Saw And Other Adventures

What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Hardcover)






Authors Malcolm Gladwell

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Product Description
What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard-but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century?

In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tipping Point; Blink; and Outliers. Now, in What the Dog Saw, he brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from TheNew Yorker over the same period.

Here is the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill, and the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz. Gladwell sits with Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen, as he sells rotisserie ovens, and divines the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer" who can calm savage animals with the touch of his hand. He explores intelligence tests and ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias" and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate.

"Good writing," Gladwell says in his preface, "does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head."What the Dog Saw is yet another example of the buoyant spirit and unflagging curiosity that have made Malcolm Gladwell our most brilliant investigator of the hidden extraordinary.

Product Details
# Hardcover: 432 pages
# Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (October 20, 2009)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0316075841
# ISBN-13: 978-0316075848
# Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
# Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds

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Reviews What the Dog Saw And Other Adventures


GREAT PRAISE FOR WHAT THE DOG SAW:

"[Malcolm Gladwell] is one of the brightest stars in the media firmament...Gladwell's clear prose and knack for upending conventional wisdom across the social sciences have made The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers, as well as his lengthy magazine features on topics ranging from cool-hunting to ketchup, into must reads." (Time.com Alex Altman )

"This evidence of a Gladwell effect helps to predict something larger: that Mr. Gladwell's new book will be as successful as his first three...This book full of short conversation pieces is a collection that plays to the author's strengths. It underscores his way of finding suitably quirky subjects (the history of women's hair-dye advertisements; the secret of Heinz's unbeatable ketchup; even the effects of women's changing career patterns on the number of menstrual periods they experience in their lifetimes) and using each as gateway to some larger meaning." (New York Times Janet Maslin )

"Gladwell is a writer of many gifts. His nose for the untold back story will have readers repeatedly muttering, "Gee, that's interesting!" He avoids shopworn topics, easy moralization and conventional wisdom, encouraging his readers to think again and think different...Some chapters are masterpieces in the art of the essay." (The New York Times Book Review Steven Pinker )

"Uniformly delightful...Malcolm Gladwell can write engrossingly about just about anything...His witty, probing articles are as essential to David Remnick's New Yorker as those of Wolcott Gibbs and A.J. Liebling were to Harold Ross's...Gladwell has a gift for capturing personalities, a Borscht Belt comic's feel for timing and a bent for counterintuitive thinking. He loves to start a piece by settling you onto a cushion of received ideas, then yanking it out from under you."- (Bloomberg News Craig Seligman )

"Malcolm Gladwell triumphantly returns to his roots with this collections of his great works from The New Yorker Magazine....Do yourself a favor and curl up with What the Dog Saw this week: It is more entertaining and edifying than should be legal for any book." (Louisville Courier-Journal Scott Coffman )

"In What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell leads the reader on delightful side excursions, shows with insightful conversation how one path interweaves with another, and suggests meaning-he is, in short, an interpretative naturalist of American culture." (The Oregonian Alice Evans )

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Mastering the Art of French Cooking (2 Volume Set) [BOX SET] (Hardcover)






Authors Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck

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Product Description
The perfect gift for any follower of Julia Child—and any lover of French food. This boxed set brings together Mastering the Art of French Cooking, first published in 1961, and its sequel, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume Two, published in 1970.

Volume One is the classic cookbook, in its entirety—524 recipes.
“Anyone can cook in the French manner anywhere,” wrote Mesdames Beck, Bertholle, and Child, “with the right instruction.” And here is the book that, for nearly fifty years, has been teaching Americans how.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking is for both seasoned cooks and beginners who love good food and long to reproduce at home the savory delights of the classic cuisine, from the historic Gallic masterpieces to the seemingly artless perfection of a dish of spring-green peas. The techniques learned in this beautiful book, with more than one hundred instructive illustrations, can be applied to recipes in all other French cookbooks, making them infinitely usable. In compiling the secrets of famous Cordon Bleu chefs, the authors produced a magnificent volume that continues to have a place of honor in American kitchens.

Volume Two is the sequel to the great cooking classic—with 257 additional recipes.
Following the publication of the celebrated Volume One, Julia Child and Simone Beck continued to search out and sample new recipes among the classic dishes and regional specialties of France—cooking, conferring, tasting, revising, perfecting. Out of their discoveries they made, for Volume Two, a brilliant selection of precisely those recipes that not only add to the repertory but, above all, bring the reader to a new level of mastery of the art of French cooking.

Each of these recipes is worked out step-by-step, with the clarity and precision that are the essence of the first volume. Five times as many drawings as in Volume One make the clear instructions even more so.

Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of this volume is that it will make Americans actually more expert than their French contemporaries in two supreme areas of cookery: baking and charcuterie. In France one can turn to the local bakery for fresh and expertly baked bread, or to neighborhood charcuterie for pâtés and terrines and sausages. Here, most of us have no choice but to create them for ourselves.
Bon appétit!

Product Details
# Hardcover
# Publisher: Knopf; Later edition (December 1, 2009)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0307593525
# ISBN-13: 978-0307593528
# Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 7.5 x 3.6 inches
# Shipping Weight: 6.4 pounds

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Reviews Mastering the Art of French Cooking


I discovered this cookbook several years ago and, at least gastronomically, it changed my life forever. The recipes are broken down into the absolute simplest steps possible. The sauces are phenomenal. One can finally appreciate the notoriety that French cooking has (deservedly) earned by preparing and tasting any of these recipes. Julia has confirmed me as a French cooking fan!

The quest for good food led to a life-long passion for honest good food. The French approach eating with a sincereity Americans lack. Julia has been able to present classic French Cuisine to generations of Americans. This set of two volumes contains the essence of French cooking that will serve as a foundation to wherever one travels on the food road. Mine is almost disentegrating from years of loving use, and I am replacing one for the library, but plan to continue to use my dog-eared friend!

Stones into Schools Promoting Peace with Books

Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Hardcover)





Authors Greg Mortenson

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Product Description
In this dramatic first-person narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan; his extensive work in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan after a massive earthquake hit the region in 2005; and the unique ways he has built relationships with Islamic clerics, militia commanders, and tribal leaders even as he was dodging shootouts with feuding Afghan warlords and surviving an eight-day armed abduction by the Taliban. He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women-all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort.

Since the 2006 publication of Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson has traveled across the U.S. and the world to share his vision with hundreds of thousands of people. He has met with heads of state, top military officials, and leading politicians who all seek his advice and insight. The continued phenomenal success of Three Cups of Tea proves that there is an eager and committed audience for Mortenson's work and message.

Product Details
# Hardcover: 448 pages
# Publisher: Viking Adult; 1st edition (December 1, 2009)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0670021156
# ISBN-13: 978-0670021154
# Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
# Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds

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Reviews Stones into Schools Promoting Peace with Books


In his latest book, Greg Mortenson hosts the reader as a valuable and welcomed traveling companion as he retraces his steps through the most remote areas of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier areas and the formidable terrain of Afghanistan holding a mirror to our humanity. Mortenson introduces us to his trusted companions t...urned employees of Central Asia Institute, the so-called "Dirty Dozen", who truly embody the virtues of goodwill and perseverance in the name of literacy and, of course, God.

In short, Greg Mortenson's work makes Anthony Bordain's exotic travel look like a visit to Epcot Center.

Mortenson's committment to cross-cultural understanding beyond the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan is rivaled only by his determination to educate the under-served girls in the most remote areas of these countries. Stones Into Schools is a suspenseful, heart-breaking as it is heart-warming, true account of a life well lived and a people well-served. Mortenson is an honor to the human race and diplomat for world peace. About now, Greg Mortenson would do well to take his own advice and sit for a month under a walnut tree to recuperate.

His second book is even better in my opinion. Teaching people that they have the power to change themselves is so simple but sometimes takes incredibale amounts of work by other people. Greg and his team have performed incredible acts of bravery, endurance, and dedication to the noble cause of providing education to the girls of Pakistan and Afghanistan. You will not be able to put this book down. You also learn firsthand accounts of the success of many of the first girls to go through Greg's schools.