Attempts to biographize corporate mascot and real human being Harland Sanders better known as Colonel Sanders, the man who started what would become the restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The James Beard Award–winning food writer serves up “a quirky and rewarding exploration of a ‘very real time, place, product, and person’” (TriQuarterly). Among the most recognizable corporate icons, only one was ever a real person: Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken/KFC. From a 1930s roadside café in Corbin, Kentucky, Harland Sanders launched a fried chicken business that now circles the globe, serving “finger lickin’ good” chicken to more than twelve million people every day. But to get there, he had to give up control of his company and even his own image, becoming a mere symbol to people today who don’t know that Colonel Sanders was a very real human being. This book tells his story of a dirt-poor striver with unlimited ambition who personified the American Dream. Acclaimed cultural historian Josh Ozersky defines the American Dream as being able to transcend your roots and create yourself as you see fit. Harland Sanders did exactly that. At the age of sixty-five—after failed jobs and misfortune—he packed his car with a pressure cooker and his secret blend of eleven herbs and spices and began peddling the recipe for “Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken” to small-town diners. Ozersky traces the rise of Kentucky Fried Chicken from this unlikely beginning, telling the dramatic story of Sanders’ self-transformation into “The Colonel,” his truculent relationship with KFC management as their often-disregarded goodwill ambassador, and his equally turbulent afterlife as the world’s most recognizable commercial icon. “Nobody finishing this book will look at their local KFC in the same way again.” —The National

In this title, unwrap the life of talented KFC creator Colonel Harland Sanders! Readers will enjoy getting the scoop on this Food Dude, beginning with his childhood in rural Indiana. Students can follow Sanders's success from his early days as family cook to his work on farms, in the US Army, on railroads, and finally at gas stations, where he perfected the Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe. Sanders's family and his retirement years as a television advertising star are also highlighted. Engaging text familiarizes readers with topics of interest including the state of KFC in the fast food world today. An entertaining sidebar, a helpful timeline, a glossary, and an index supplement the historical and color photos showcased in this inspiring biography. Aligned to Common Core standards and correlated to state standards. Checkerboard Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

“This is a book to savor, especially if you’re a fast-food fan.”—Bookpage "This fun, argumentative, and frequently surprising pop history of American fast food will thrill and educate food lovers of all speeds." —Publishers Weekly Most any honest person can own up to harboring at least one fast-food guilty pleasure. In Drive-Thru Dreams, Adam Chandler explores the inseparable link between fast food and American life for the past century. The dark underbelly of the industry’s largest players has long been scrutinized and gutted, characterized as impersonal, greedy, corporate, and worse. But, in unexpected ways, fast food is also deeply personal and emblematic of a larger than life image of America. With wit and nuance, Chandler reveals the complexities of this industry through heartfelt anecdotes and fascinating trivia as well as interviews with fans, executives, and workers. He traces the industry from its roots in Wichita, where White Castle became the first fast food chain in 1921 and successfully branded the hamburger as the official all-American meal, to a teenager's 2017 plea for a year’s supply of Wendy’s chicken nuggets, which united the internet to generate the most viral tweet of all time. Drive-Thru Dreams by Adam Chandler tells an intimate and contemporary story of America—its humble beginning, its innovations and failures, its international charisma, and its regional identities—through its beloved roadside fare.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and one of the world’s greatest storytellers comes "an insistently metaphysical mind-bender” (The New Yorker) about a teenager on the run and an aging simpleton. Now with a new introduction by the author. Here we meet 15-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey. “As powerful as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.... Reading Murakami ... is a striking experience in consciousness expansion.” —The Chicago Tribune

"In 'Impeccable Connections,' Malcolm MacKay, who knew his subject, attempts to fathom the man whom puzzled contemporaries could not." —Maxwell Carter, writing for the The Wall Street Journal “Read this spellbinding book, which repeatedly takes your breath away, and learn that some things never change.” —Craig R. Whitney, author of LIVING WITH GUNS: A LIBERAL’S CASE FOR THE SECOND AMENDMENT Although Richard Whitney is not a common name today, the story of his rise to the top of Wall Street and fall to Sing Sing presages the more recent trajectories of men such as Bernard Madoff, Ivan Boesky, and Charles Keating. In a sense, Whitney’s fall was even greater in that he started at the top of the old-guard establishment. “NOT DICK WHITNEY. NOT DICK WHITNEY!” President Franklin D. Roosevelt exclaimed upon being told Richard Whitney, the long-time president of the New York Stock Exchange, was a criminal. Almost ten years earlier, on October 24, 1929, Black Thursday, as one newspaper’s headline put it the next day, “Richard Whitney Halts Stock Panic.” In 1934, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, hailed as the leader of the securities industry in its fight against New Deal regulation. Whitney’s message was clear: the securities industry could regulate itself, and the federal government should stay out. Sound familiar? This book tells the tale of Richard Whitney and describes in detail the banking and investment structure that precipitated the stock market collapse of 1929, and how as president of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Whitney played his role while manipulating powerful and trusted friends.