At Home on the Range
by Margaret Yardley Potter (McSweeney’s, $24)
Before Eat, Pray, Love, there was At Home on the Range, said Michael Hainey in GQ. When memoirist Elizabeth Gilbert rediscovered this 1947 cookbook written by her great-grandmother, we were all lucky she pushed to get it reprinted. “This is a cookbook that puts to shame” all recent efforts in food adventurism. Margaret Yardley Potter championed eating everything from calf’s brains to cockscombs, and her voice was “one part Dorothy Parker and one part M.F.K. Fisher.”
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The Cookbook Library
by Anne Willan and Mark Cherniavsky (Univ. of Calif., $50)Anne Willan, the founder of an esteemed French cooking school, “has a cookbook library any food historian—and any serious self-styled foodie—would lust after,” said Noelle Carter in the Los Angeles Times. In this fascinating book, she and her husband survey the collection’s greatest hits, including titles dating to the 1400s. In addition to providing antique recipes, each tested for the modern cook, they write knowledgeably about the evolution of cookbooks.
Yes, Chef
by Marcus Samuelsson (Random House, $27)
You might think this author was a coddled wunderkind, said Erica Marcus in Newsday. By 24, he was already running Manhattan restaurant Aquavit and the youngest chef ever to receive a three-star review from The New York Times. In his new memoir, he reveals the surprisingly arduous path he took to culinary celebrity, beginning with his Ethiopian childhood, his mother’s death, and his adoption by a Swedish couple. “The story of Samuelsson’s development as a chef is beautifully told.”
A Feast of Ice & Fire
by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer (Bantam, $35)To be fully immersed in the fantasy world of TV’s Game of Thrones, you need recipes, said Nick Owchar in the Los Angeles Times. In the series’s inspiration, George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire saga, Martin provides enough details about the characters’ meals that two food bloggers have been able to build a cookbook around them. Not surprisingly, there are enough meat dishes included that Martin comes across as “the medieval Dr. Atkins.”
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Weapons: Julia Garner stars in 'hyper-eerie' psychological thrillerThe Week Recommends Zach Cregger's 'top notch' new film opens with 17 children disappearing at exactly the same time
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Freakier Friday: Lohan and Curtis reunite for 'uneven' but 'endearing' sequelThe Week Recommends Mother-and-daughter comedy returns with four characters switching bodies
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Al fresco art: the UK's best sculpture parksThe Week Recommends Soak up the scenery with a stroll through these open-air galleries
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”