Garden History

The history of philosophy has been a predictably tragic or comical succession of palliatives for human disquiet. Thinkers from Spinoza to Berdyaev have pursued the perennial questions of how to be happy, how to be good, how to be loved, and how to live in a world of change and loss. But perhaps we can learn more from cats - the animal that has most captured our imagination - than from the great thinkers of the world. In Feline Philosophy, the philosopher John Gray discovers in cats a way of living that is unburdened by anxiety and self-consciousness....

Mark Kurlansky's first global food history since the best-selling Cod and Salt; the fascinating cultural, economic and culinary story of milk and all things dairy - with recipes throughout. According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a splatter of the goddess Hera's breast milk became our galaxy, the Milky Way.

When Robert Catesby, the charismatic son of a Catholic gentleman, marries heiress Catherine Leigh and inherits the rich Oxfordshire manor house at Aston from his grandmother, it seems that the future happiness of the couple must be assured. However, Robert’s deep involvement in plots to overthrow the Protestant queen Elizabeth I and his increasingly dangerous behavior threaten the lives of his wife and their young son.

Journeying 2,000 years into the past, food critic and writer William Sitwell artfully traces the earliest origins of the widespread cultural practice of eating out, from its most basic to most sophisticated forms. Whether he’s traversing the inns and taverns of Pompeii before its destruction in AD 79, witnessing the tumultuous emergence of fine dining during the French Revolution, or recounting the mid-20th-century invention of the taco machine in New York City, Sitwell’s engaging prose gives listeners a front-row seat to the restaurant experience across cultures and millennia.

The Garden in Eden was filled with fruit-producing trees, sprouting plants and grasses, and gently flowing rivers. Adam, G-d's chosen king/priest, was called to cultivate the garden's fertile soil, to guard the sacred space from external enemies, and to rule over the Earth. After breaking covenant with YHWH, his king, Adam was banished to the field, a place of thorns and thistles, where he became a slave to the earth. The Temple Revealed in the Garden: Priests and Kings examines the Garden story from an ancient Near East perspective.

Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll transports listeners back in time to witness the remarkable evolution of the American restaurant chef in the 1970s and 1980s. Andrew Friedman goes inside Chez Panisse and other Bay Area restaurants to show how the politically charged backdrop of Berkeley helped spark this new profession; into the historically underrated community of Los Angeles chefs, including a young Wolfgang Puck; and into the clash of cultures between established French chefs in New York City and the American game changers.

Humans have long turned to gardens—both real and imaginary—for sanctuary from the frenzy and tumult that surrounds them. Those gardens may be as far away from everyday reality as Gilgamesh’s garden of the gods or as near as our own backyard, but in their very conception and the marks they bear of human care and cultivation, gardens stand as restorative, nourishing, necessary havens.

¿Cómo eran los sabores del Virreinato? ¿Qué recetas se seguían en el convento de San Jerónimo? ¿Cuáles platillos preparaba sor Juana Inés de la Cruz? A través de treinta y ocho recetas originales, la talentosa escritora Mónica Lavín y la reconocida historiadora Ana Benítez se adentran en el sorprendente universo de la gastronomía del siglo XVII y nos revelan la destreza culinaria de la poeta que revolucionó las letras novohispanas.

The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon is an exciting story of detection involving legends, expert decipherment of ancient texts, and a vivid description of a little-known civilization. Recognized in ancient times as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the legendary Hanging Garden of Babylon and its location still remains a mystery steeped in shadow and puzzling myths. In this remarkable volume Stephanie Dalley, a world expert on ancient Babylonian language, gathers for the first time all the material on this enigmatic World Wonder.

That the dog evolved from the wolf is an accepted fact of evolution and history, but the question of how wolf became dog has remained a mystery, obscured by myth and legend. How the Dog Became the Dog posits that dog was an evolutionary inevitability in the nature of the wolf and its human soul mate. The natural temperament and social structure of humans and wolves are so similar that as soon as they met on the trail they recognized themselves in each other.

In Red Sauce, Ian MacAllen traces the evolution of traditional Italian-American cuisine, often referred to as "red sauce Italian," from its origins in Italy to its transformation in America into a new, distinct cuisine. It is a fascinating social and culinary history exploring the integration of red sauce food into mainstream America alongside the blending of Italian immigrant otherness into a national American identity.

In Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits, journalist Aaron Goldfarb goes on an adventure in vintage spirits. This is an intoxicating story of obsessives on the hunt for old bottles of whiskey, tequila, rum, chartreuse—you name it—from estate sales, grandpa's liquor cabinet, and out-of-the-way and inner-city liquor stores that may just have a case or a few bottles lying around in the basement.

The George and Matilda stories all revolve about events or facts that concern orchids. The stories range from the discovery of rare plants in the long ago past to the extinction of species in a future time. The stories are unique in that while each tale takes place in a different time era and country, the characters and their personalities always remain the same. George and Matilda are usually accompanied by George’s best friend William and Matilda’s great-aunt Bertha. Most of these stories were originally published in the "Orchid Digest" and a few of those were also translated for the ...

Archaeological evidence proves that women in ancient Mesopotamia had great political and religious status during the Garden of Eden period where, once upon a time, goddesses and gods lived harmoniously together. That is why there was a design and rhythm to the Garden of Eden, a yin and yang concept. Through the veil of ignorance, we lost that paradise. To create that balance in a new way, we first have to heal the earth by opening certain stories and putting them back onto the page and into our collective memory. In Mesopotamian Goddesses: Unveiling Your Feminine Power, Eric Hoffer award-...

The Apple: A Delicious History tells the engrossing and richly informative story of a fruit with a unique attachment to the human story. The 10,000-year tale of the round and pleasantly crunchy products of the trees of the genus Malus embraces not only culinary, horticultural, social and commercial history but also age-old traditions in mythology, folklore and religion.

A natural history of the wilderness in our homes, from the microbes in our showers to the crickets in our basements Even when the floors are sparkling clean and the house seems silent, our domestic domain is wild beyond imagination. In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn introduces us to the nearly 200,000 species living with us in our own homes, from the Egyptian meal moths in our cupboards and camel crickets in our basements to the lactobacillus lounging on our kitchen counters. You are not alone.

Food is one of life's great joys. So why has eating become such a source of anxiety and confusion? Bee Wilson shows that in two generations the world has undergone a massive shift from traditional, limited diets to more globalized ways of eating, from bubble tea to quinoa, from Soylent to meal kits. Paradoxically, our diets are getting healthier and less healthy at the same time. For some, there has never been a happier food era than today: a time of unusual herbs, farmers' markets, and internet recipe swaps.

Taking listeners on a gastronomic journey from Paris and London to New York, Chicago and San Francisco, Lustful Appetites reveals how this preoccupation changed the ways we eat and the ways we are intimate—while also creating stigmas that persist well into our own twenty-first century.

Since the dawn of civilization, felines have prowled alongside mankind as they expanded their territory and spread the myth of human greatness. And today, cats are peddled on social media as silly creatures here to amuse humans with their antics. But this is an absurd, self-centered fantasy. The true history of felines is one of heroism, love, tragedy, sacrifice, and gravitas. Not entirely convinced? Well, get ready, because Baba the Cat is here to set the record straight.

French Dirt is a love story between a man and his garden. It's about plowing, planting, watering, and tending. It's about cabbage, tomatoes, parsley, and eggplant. Most of all, it's about the growing friendship between an American outsider and a close-knit community of French farmers.