Los Angeles–based food writer Shah wows in her debut cookbook, an attempt to define and document Indian American cuisine. Born to immigrant parents who had to adapt their recipes because of limited access to authentic Indian ingredients, Shah and generations of Indian Americans grew up eating blended fare featuring flavors from both cultures. Bold, flavorful, and only sometimes spicy, these recipes represent a cuisine that has been largely overlooked in the ever-growing Asian cooking boom in America. From delicious breakfast options including saag paneer frittatas and a beautiful shahi tukda French toast made with saffron, pistachios, and rose petals, these dishes are both toothsome and elegant. Shah showcases sandwiches, dosas and samosas, and rice and noodles, along with some surprising pizza options that will tantalize the taste buds and earn her a devoted following. Alongside such tempting entries as classic butter chicken, saag paneer lasagna, and spicy cilantro chutney mussels, she also aims to educate, with sidebars on eating meat and Indian drinking culture. To round out any meal, she finishes with appealing recipes for an array of chutneys, vegetables, beverages, and desserts. Complete with mouthwatering photos, the result is an alluring collection that every true foodie will embrace. (June)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Twilley (Until Proven Safe), cohost of the Gastropod podcast, offers a revelatory deep dive into refrigeration’s past and present. She goes well beyond the obvious (“nearly three-quarters of everything on the average American plate” is at some point refrigerated) to explore every aspect of what she dubs the “artificial cryosphere”—a globe-spanning cold zone maintained by massive infrastructures and energy expenditures that, due to its greenhouse gas emissions, has paradoxically played a major role in “the disappearance of its natural counterpart”: ice. She traces refrigeration’s current global dominance back to a chance misunderstanding 200 years ago, when organic chemists’ erroneous conclusion that “protein from flesh foods was the only essential nutrient” led to widespread fears of meat famine and subsequent investment in and adoption of new methods to store meat. Among the many intriguing topics covered are refrigeration’s role in generating food waste (studies blame fridge design—the bigger the fridge, the more likely a household is to overbuy perishables and overlook them till they spoil) and the energy waste associated with the American system of egg distribution (they are industrially washed, removing their naturally bacteria-resistant layer, and thus require refrigeration; in other countries, chickens are vaccinated against salmonella to obviate the need for washing). The result is a brilliant synthesis of a complex system’s many facets, with a useful focus on sustainable solutions. (June)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Alexander Hamilton was an unwavering elitist who worked tirelessly to transform the U.S. into an industrial empire ruled by oligarchs, according to this blistering study. Historian Hogeland (The Whiskey Rebellion) recaps Treasury Secretary Hamilton’s project of using Revolutionary War debt to bind the new nation together, arguing that Hamilton designed his policy—whereby the federal government assumed state debts on terms generous to wealthy creditors—to give elites a stake in the government and as a rationale to levy taxes to finance more debt that would pay for business-friendly goals like building infrastructure, subsidizing industry, and funding the military. Crucial to Hamilton’s scheme was a whiskey tax that galled the poor farmers who produced it, sparking the 1791 Whiskey Rebellion—which Hamilton welcomed, Hogeland contends, because it let him demonstrate federal power by organizing an army. Hogeland contrasts Hamilton, whose efforts promoting his elitist vision are depicted as “near-maniacal,” with “the Democracy”—a term encompassing working-class radicals, backwoods moonshiners, and anyone who wanted rights for the nonpropertied—whom Hogeland wistfully celebrates for fighting back. His analysis of the early republic’s finances is lucid and impressive, and the narrative is stocked with colorful, unflattering profiles of other founding fathers including George Washington, who emerges as a sharp operator who shaped government policy to boost the value of his frontier holdings. It’s a bracing and insightful rejoinder to recent Hamilton worship. (May)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Memoirist MacDonald (The Things I Came Here With) combines the history of the 1990s British punk band Leatherface with visceral meditations on how the group shaped his life. After hearing the band’s 1991 album, Mush, in his friend’s Toronto basement as a teen, the author felt he’d found “an answer in a world I’d yet to understand.” Years later, MacDonald’s infatuation with the music inspired a backpacking trip across the U.K. with a friend, where they heard the band play live and befriended its members. Later, MacDonald realized Leatherface had tapped into something deeper: a love of poetry and a desire ”to voice myself” in prose, so that “those expressions could be as resounding with others as [singer Frankie] Stubbs’ were with me.” The central narrative is interwoven—­sometimes haphazardly­—with the band’s biography, drawn from conversations with Leatherface members. MacDonald’s intimate and exuberant personal reflections are the highlight, particularly when he’s capturing the sense of youthful possibility that came with discovering the band and embarking on the backpacking trip (“Passersby saw only our beat-up eyes and dishevelled appearance. But they didn’t see... the two humans in the apex of life... bewildered by the power of our surroundings”). This buoyant ode to a favorite band charms. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Everything Is Fine podcaster Romolini (Weird in a World That’s Not) spins a cautionary tale of workaholism in this harrowing if somewhat glib account. Romolini begins in 2017, when she reached the peak of her career as a magazine editor in Los Angeles and her vocal cords suddenly stopped working. From there, she rewinds to her childhood, explaining how growing up in 1970s and ’80s Philadelphia as the child of teenage parents cemented the unassailable value of work in her mind. During her risk-taking adolescence and hard-drinking college years, Romolini prized employment above all else, burying childhood traumas and self-loathing with professional achievements. After her first marriage fell apart, she moved to Brooklyn and decided to become a writer, dating men and making friends merely as a means to climb the ladder at publications including Glamour and Timeout, where she tolerated bad bosses and insane hours. The pattern continued well after Romolini remarried, started a family, and began to experience intimacy issues with her new husband. She neglected their relationship until she experienced the vocal cord episode that opens the book. By then, too much repetition and too many truisms (“Work was an eager lover I never said no to”) have robbed the narrative of some of its potency. Still, readers struggling with their own work-life balance will find value. Agent: Nicole Tourtelot, Gernert Co. (June)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

British conservationist Gibson explores her passion for fishing in this captivating debut. As a child, Gibson cast for trout with her mother at a farm near their home in Gloucestershire. That hobby became an obsession—Gibson opted for a 21st birthday present of fishing rods over jewelry—and then a career, with Gibson promoting fishing gear for Orvis and then becoming a certified instructor in Yorkshire, where she eventually opened her own fishing school. As Gibson traces her career path, highlighting the “soft misogyny” she faced from internet commenters and male fishermen, she also reflects on personal milestones, including a trip to Bolivia to capture “one of the most powerful game fish in the world” and her rocky marriage to a man she calls “B.” Through it all, Gibson remains a winning narrator, fortifying the potentially niche material with lyrical prose (“Like Ariadne’s thread, this unspooling line of fishing memories and experiences has led me out of some corners that felt dark and unnavigable”). This moving meditation will even sink its hooks into readers who’ve never cast a line. Agent: Rebecca Wearmouth, Peters, Fraser & Dunlop. (June)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this harrowing debut, Chowdhary recalls growing up Muslim in early 2000s Ahmedabad, India, as anti-Islamic violence gripped the country. She opens the account with the 2002 Gujarat train fire, during which 58 Hindu pilgrims died, and explains how India’s right-wing government leveraged the tragedy to blame Muslims and foment discrimination that had begun gathering steam after 9/11. Chowdhary was 16 years old and living with her parents and grandparents at the time. She catalogs the fallout, discussing the rape and murder of her Muslim neighbors by Indian nationalists and drawing disturbing parallels between India’s official response to the fire and the rise of Nazi Germany. She also zooms in on more intimate violence the women around her faced in patriarchal Muslim households, recalling her father’s alcoholic outbursts and describing how her peers came to believe that “there will come a day when the sun will be overthrown, the stars will fall, the universe will turn in on itself, and on that day, a god we’ve never seen... will finally bring every lost girl home.” Offsetting the heaviness of the subject matter with lyrical prose and moments of simple beauty (such as a birthday celebration filled with cakes and embraces), Chowdhary delivers an exceptional portrait of resilience in the face of unfathomable cruelty. This is difficult to forget. Agent: Anjali Singh, Anjali Singh Agency. (July)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this half-hearted domestic thriller from Flynn (The Girls Are All So Nice Here), a woman has her impending wedding derailed by the emergence of her missing first husband. In 2012, when newlyweds June and Josh were on their honeymoon in San Francisco, Josh left their hotel one morning and never returned; unable to locate his body, authorities assumed he drowned after attempting to swim in rough waters. Ten years later, a 39-year-old June has opened a wine bar in Brooklyn and fallen for the stable and supportive Kyle. When Kyle proposes, June enthusiastically accepts, and they make quick work of their wedding prep—until June spots a man who looks exactly like Josh on the street one afternoon, and he disappears before she can confront him. Convinced that Josh is still alive, June grows obsessed with finding him, jeopardizing her relationship with Kyle. Meanwhile, chapters set in 1999 and written from the perspective of Josh’s mother, Bev, gradually fill in key details about Josh’s adolescence. Flynn serves up plenty of steamy sex and wrings emotion from June’s plight, but the plotting grows sloppier as the novel wears on, and the denouement comes too late. This misses the mark. Agent: Hillary Jacobson, CAA. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Zizka (Cook Color) serves up an exciting array of recipes and party-planning tips in this inspiring guide to hosting. The meals draw from a variety of cuisines, and many have components that can be prepared ahead of time: both the pork-cabbage filling and the dough for the tie-dye dumplings can be made up to three days in advance, as can the risotto for the saffron arancini. Quicker crowd-pleasing fare includes fish kebabs, salt-and-vinegar potato peel chips with chive dip, and the Lebanese-influenced frittata with labne sauce. To round out any event, Zizka includes enticing dessert options such as ube amaretti cookies and drinks of both the boozy (sour cherry-tinis) and nonalcoholic (mock tiki punch) varieties. She also provides a dozen party menus to help readers plan for various occasions, ranging from holiday dinners and after-parties to Galentine’s Day brunch and springtime luncheons. Throughout, Zizka shares plenty of tips, noting, for example, that serving drinks to guests as soon as they arrive is a great way to break the ice. This go-to volume is sure to help readers prepare memorable and tasty festivities. Agent: Katherine Cowles, Cowles Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

This trenchant report from journalist Smith (Totally Wired) explores how coding is transforming the world. Smith recounts learning to code, touring Google’s campus, attending a conference for enthusiasts of the Python programming language, and interviewing myriad programmers and computer scientists to better understand the downstream effects of entrusting the construction of society’s digital architecture to coders, a group composed “overwhelmingly [of] white and Asian men.” The balanced assessment finds that for every Quincy Larson, who created a free online coding boot camp to diversify the field, there’s someone like the libertarian Google employee Smith met at a conference whose tendency to abstract moral issues led him to believe unhoused people deserve to live on the streets for failing to make use of allegedly abundant economic opportunities. The nuanced conclusion Smith draws from his conversations is that coding depends on abstraction; “files are abstractions for bytes on a disc” that are themselves packaged and abstracted by additional layers of code. In a sophisticated analysis that would make Marshall McLuhan proud, Smith posits that such abstractions alienate users and coders from the consequences of their online actions, suggesting, for instance, that social media companies are inured to the harms they cause because the intricate workings of their self-learning algorithms are opaque even to those who create them. A searing philosophical take on the ravages of the digital age, this is a must-read. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink