Staff Picks Category: Non-fiction

Baking: From my Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan [Book]

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Over the past 20 years Greenspan has written 10 cookbooks and won six James Beard and IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) awards for them. This book is pretty enough to be a coffee table book, but enticing enough that you will quickly take it into the kitchen. From muffins to cookies to fancy cakes, the author and her recipes are very accessible. This is my go-to baking cookbook for muffins, scones, cookies and more. Everything I have made from this book has been easy and delicious. Her more recent book is Around my French Table: More than 300 Recipes from my Home to Yours.

The Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman [Book]

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The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson [Book]

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The popular fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes once stated,“when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

The Psychopath Test, a work of non-fiction, begins as a real life mystery to discover the meaning and motivation behind selected mailings of a strange bound book entitled Being or Nothingness (notewe are not referring to Sartre’sBeing and Nothingness). Jon Ronson, a journalist and the author of the highly successful novel the Men Who Stare at Goats, is enlisted to find the source and make some sense of the text.

Many aspects of the authors life begin to arrive at certain parallels as the quest progresses and further mysteries unfurl themselves. He finds himself in conversation with members of the church of Scientology (who hold a strong opposition to the field of psychiatry) which leads to an interview with a particular inmate at the Broadmoor Asylum who claims he has faked madness as an escape a lengthy jail sentence.

Ronson becomes intrigued with the concept of psychopathy and learns that there is a specific test that helps experts determine whether any individual has psychopathic tendencies.It should be noted that overall, these studies claim to reveal that 1 out of every 100 people happen to be psychopaths (you’re now cataloging and making a mental list of all the people you know, aren’t you?). He later applies the test to an infamously ruthless CEO after learning studies show that 4 out of every 100 big business, corporate leaders happen to be psychopaths. This interview with the man possessing a menagerie of predatorial creature artwork offers plenty of laughs. You may have heard an excerpt from this humorous section of the book and also the Broadmoor story on NPR’s This American Life.The Psychopath Test eventually extends from Ronson’s personal adventure to discuss the history of experimental treatments for troubled individuals, the present state of the psychiatric and mental health fields and also pharmaceutical industry. While Ronson carefully exhibits little or no bias on these aforementioned subjects, he skillfully presents issues at hand. Though his journey leads him to come face to face with serious and thought provoking dilemmas, Ronson is able find humor in certain situations and always keeps the reader entertained. At one stage the author writes, “I was writing a book about the madness industry and only just realizing that I was part of the industry.”

The Best One Dish Suppers by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated [Book]

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This cookbook is a collection of recipes from American’s Test Kitchen that are all made in one pan or one pot or a dutch oven or a slow cooker. There are 180 recipes with 169 illustrations and tips, tricks and helpful hints accompany the step by step recipes. The recipes include stews, soups, casseroles, pot pies and stir-frys. Several vegetarian options are also included. This cookbook is great to try out some new twists on comfort foods and cool weather favorites.

Any Day Now: David Bowie by Kevin Cann [Book]

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Any Day Now covers Bowie’s early life and the beginning phases of his exceptional musical career. This painstakingly assembled biography/chronology lists studio session dates and concert appearances, presents press clippings and handwritten letters and also provides a complete discography for the said period in time. Most impressive is the multitude of incredible photographs of the adventurous singer; each page is filled with striking images, large and small. It’s an interesting read and account of the rapidly progressing artist in both appearance and musical style.

Man Ray in Paris by Erin C. Garcia [Book]

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We’ve recently been hit with a steady current of material spotlighting Americans residing among the Parisians in the 1920’s. Several fantastic books on the subject have been published this year along with the opening of Woody Allen’s new comedy Midnight in Paris.

Paris in the 1920’s was a creative haven for many artists, critics, filmmakers and writers. Man Ray, who would not wish to be simply classified as a photographer (he considered himself a painter who also took photographs, made films and worked with sculpture and collage), came to France in 1921 and produced some of his most revered photographic work. Basing much of his craft on experimentation and dreamlike imagery, he aligned himself with artists in the Dada and Surrealist movements. In Erin C. Garcia’s book, we see portraits of Man Ray’s colleagues which include Jean Cocteau, Hans Arp, Salvador Dalí and Marcel Duchamp.

Man Ray in Paris provides many stunning photographic plates and also chronicles the artist’s stay in the City of Light.

A House, a Street, a City : the Story of 17 Summer by Lu Stone [Book]

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Published as part of Northampton’s 350^th Anniversary Chapbook Series, Lu Stone’s remarkable history of the house and street she called home is a fascinating portrait of the many interwoven stories which make up our neighborhoods. Finely illustrated and impeccably researched, the book is a rich tapestry of the many lives whose fates crossed in the neighborhood in the 110+ years before she purchased the house in 1983. The subjects range from working class families and Olympic athletes to Lewis Warner, the President of the Hampshire County National Bank who suddenly absconded with hundreds of thousands of dollars from the bank in 1898. The book remains one of the finest examples of a ‘people’s history’ we have in the region, of dusty stories forgotten through the ages but rediscovered through neighbor’s anecdotes, dusty old newspapers, library microfilm and aging photographs cherished by relatives. The house in question, which sits today mere yards from 7-Eleven and Dunkin’ Donuts, around the corner from the generic strip that is present-day King St., stood on the edge between a neighborhood of working class families and the stately homes and towering trees of 19^th century King St. The book provides a priceless snapshot of local history, illuminating lives forgotten, reviving cherished memories and in the process helping us to understand the town’s history as a whole. This book is, as always, available to borrow from the library’s collection but is also, along with others from the 350th Anniversary Chapbook series, available for purchase at the Forbes Circulation Desk.

How To Wrap Five Eggs by Hideyuki Oka, photographs by Michikazu Sakai [Book]

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This is a beautiful book containing handsome black and white photographs of simple products packaged in simple materials: rice straw, bamboo, ceramics, paper, and even leaves. The boxes, wrappers, and casks depicted in this volume are all hand-made and most of them are quite wonderfully elegant, from the humble eggs of the title, to utilitarian jars of miso, and expensive casks of sake meant as souvenirs and gifts.

Bossypants by Tina Fey [Book]

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SNL and 30 Rock star, writer and producer Tina Fey is as smart and irreverent as she is funny. This memoir gives an inside look at the improv comedy incubator Second City, developing material for Saturday Night Live, and how Fey and her contemporaries broke through the glass ceiling of comedy.*
Here in a quick engaging read is an honest tongue-in-cheek and witty look at success, motherhood, TV, sexism, and lots of famous people you may have been wondering about. A few classic scripts are included, notably the Sarah Palin/Hillary Clinton sketch that Fey and Amy Poehler did in the 2008 campaign season.

* “Women just aren’t funny.”–every male producer/director from the beginning of time.

The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn [Book]

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Flinn is an American journalist and computer executive in London and gets let go from a high power high stress job and decides to go to cooking school at the Cordon Bleu in Paris. When enrolling in cooking school, she set out to write a book about her experiences so this chronicles her year of self-discovery and finding love. It is full of humor, recipes and her adventures in a new country and language.

Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell [Audiobook]

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How to Become a Scandal by Laura Kipnis [Book]

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Who doesn’t love a scandal? In this book, Kipnis explores the how and why of scandalous behavior, including what makes the rest of us such eager consumers of other’s downfalls. She focuses on four juicy tales from the recent past at some depth , but always with a light touch: Lisa Nowak, the lovelorn astronaut; disgraced New York judge Sol Wachtler; “memoir” writer James Frey; and Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky’s confidant who encouraged her pursuit of President Clinton and then betrayed her. If you’ve ever wondered, “What were they thinking?” How to Become a Scandal attempts to answer that question.