A fierce and funny memoir of kitchen and bedroom from James Beard Award winner Betty Fussell A survivor of the domestic revolutions that turned American television sets from Leave It to Beaver to The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Julia Child’s The French Chef, food historian and journalist Betty Fussell has spotlighted the changes in American culture through food over the last half century in nearly a dozen books. In this witty and candid autobiographical mock epic, Fussell survives a motherless household during the Great Depression, gets married to the well-known writer and war historian Paul Fussell after World War II, goes through a divorce, and finally escapes to New York City in her mid-fifties, batterie de cuisine intact. My Kitchen Wars is a revelation of the author’s lifelong love affair with food—cooking it, eating it, and sharing it—no matter where or with whom she finds herself. From Princeton to Heidelberg and from London to Provence, Fussell ladles out food, sex, and travel with her wooden spoon, welcoming all who come to the table.

Boba Fett-Uccine and Princess Leia Danish Dos are just the beginning when the Force is with you in the kitchen. Wookiee Cookies is your invitation to fine culinary experiences in the Star Wars frame of mind. From C-3PO Pancakes to Jedi Juice Bars, this intergalactic Star Wars cookbook features healthy snacks, delicious dishes, sweet treats, and easy main courses no Rebel can resist. The ebook includes hilarious photos and safety tips for cooking on Earth as well as in most space stations. Age is no issue when it comes to Star Wars cuisine-kids as well as adults will have a great time with this book. Whether you drove to your first Star Wars flick or just had your fifth birthday, there's no reason you can't whip up some Crazy Cantina Chili at near light speed.

This book tells the story of the turbulent decades when the book publishing industry collided with the great technological revolution of our time. From the surge of ebooks to the self-publishing explosion and the growing popularity of audiobooks, Book Wars provides a comprehensive and fine-grained account of technological disruption in one of our most important and successful creative industries. Like other sectors, publishing has been thrown into disarray by the digital revolution. The foundation on which this industry had been based for 500 years – the packaging and sale of words and images in the form of printed books – was called into question by a technological revolution that enabled symbolic content to be stored, manipulated and transmitted quickly and cheaply. Publishers and retailers found themselves facing a proliferation of new players who were offering new products and services and challenging some of their most deeply held principles and beliefs. The old industry was suddenly thrust into the limelight as bitter conflicts erupted between publishers and new entrants, including powerful new tech giants who saw the world in very different ways. The book wars had begun. While ebooks were at the heart of many of these conflicts, Thompson argues that the most fundamental consequences lie elsewhere. The print-on-paper book has proven to be a remarkably resilient cultural form, but the digital revolution has transformed the industry in other ways, spawning new players which now wield unprecedented power and giving rise to an array of new publishing forms. Most important of all, it has transformed the broader information and communication environment, creating new challenges and new opportunities for publishers as they seek to redefine their role in the digital age. This unrivalled account of the book publishing industry as it faces its greatest challenge since Gutenberg will be essential reading for anyone interested in books and their future.

Originally published in hardcover in 2011.

There's a battle going on in school lunchrooms around the country...and it's a battle our children can't afford for us to lose. The average kid will eat 4,000 school lunches between kindergarten and twelfth grade. But what exactly are kids eating in school lunchrooms around the country? Many parents don't quite know what their children are eating-or where it came from. As award-winning filmmaker and nutritionist Amy Kalafa discovered in researching her documentary film Two Angry Moms: Fighting for the Health of America's Children, these days it's pretty rare to find a piece of fresh fruit in your average school lunchroom amid all the chips, french fries, Pop-Tarts, chicken nuggets, and soda that's being served. But what, if anything, can parents do about it? Written in response to the onslaught of requests she received from parents who saw her film and asked, "If I want to attempt to change the food culture in my kid's school, how on earth should I get started?!" this empowering book arms parents with the specific information and tools they need to get unhealthy-even dangerous-food out of their children's school cafeteria and to hold their schools and local and national governments accountable for ensuring that their growing children are served healthy meals at school. In Lunch Wars, Kalafa explains all the complicated issues surrounding school food; how to work with your school's "Wellness Policy"; the basics of self- operated vs. outsourced cafeterias; how to get funding for a school garden, and much more. Lunch Wars also features the inspiring stories of parents around the country who have fought for better school food and have won, as well as details Amy's quest to spark a revolution in her own school district. For the future health and well-being of our children, the time has come for a school food revolution.

An acclaimed writer on her mother’s tumultuous life as a Jewish immigrant in 1930s New York and her life-long guilt when the Holocaust claims the family she left behind in Latvia A story of love, war, and life as a Jewish immigrant in the squalid factories and lively dance halls of New York’s Garment District in the 1930s, My Mother’s Wars is the memoir Lillian Faderman’s mother was never able to write. The daughter delves into her mother’s past to tell the story of a Latvian girl who left her village for America with dreams of a life on the stage and encountered the realities of her new world: the battles she was forced to fight as a woman, an immigrant worker, and a Jew with family left behind in Hitler’s deadly path. The story begins in 1914: Mary, the girl who will become Lillian Faderman’s mother, just seventeen and swept up with vague ambitions to be a dancer, travels alone to America, where her half-sister in Brooklyn takes her in. She finds a job in the garment industry and a shop friend who teaches her the thrills of dance halls and the cheap amusements open to working-class girls. This dazzling life leaves Mary distracted and her half-sister and brother-in-law scandalized that she has become a “good-time gal.” They kick her out of their home, an event with consequences Mary will regret for the rest of her life. Eighteen years later, still barely scraping by as a garment worker and unmarried at thirty-five, Mary falls madly in love and has a torrid romance with a man who will never marry her, but who will father Lillian Faderman before he disappears from their lives. America is in the midst of the Depression, Hitler is coming to power in Europe, and New York’s garment workers are just beginning to unionize. Mary makes tentative steps to join, despite her lover’s angry opposition. As National Socialism engulfs Europe, Mary realizes she must find a way to get her family out of Latvia, and she spends frenetic months chasing vague promises and false rumors of hope. Pregnant again, after having submitted to two wrenching back-room abortions, and still unmarried, Mary faces both single motherhood and the devastating possibility of losing her entire Eastern European family. Drawing on family stories and documents, as well as her own tireless research, Lillian Faderman has reconstructed an engrossing and essential chapter in the history of women, of workers, of Jews, and of the Holocaust as immigrants experienced it from American shores.

From the bestselling author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir comes an unforgettable novel of a BBC-sponsored wartime cooking competition and the four women who enter for a chance to better their lives. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY GOOD HOUSEKEEPING • “This story had me so hooked, I literally couldn’t put it down.”—NPR Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses: The Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is holding a cooking contest—and the grand prize is a job as the program’s first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the competition would present a crucial chance to change their lives. For a young widow, it’s a chance to pay off her husband’s debts and keep a roof over her children’s heads. For a kitchen maid, it’s a chance to leave servitude and find freedom. For a lady of the manor, it’s a chance to escape her wealthy husband’s increasingly hostile behavior. And for a trained chef, it’s a chance to challenge the men at the top of her profession. These four women are giving the competition their all—even if that sometimes means bending the rules. But with so much at stake, will the contest that aims to bring the community together only serve to break it apart?