Milk
The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages
by Anne Mendelson (Knopf)
Ask this author: “Got milk?” and the answer might surprise you. “I never drink milk,” Mendelson tells Required Reading, adding, “Well, once in a blue moon when I can get super-fresh milk on a farm . . . Part of what I’m trying to say in this book is that the Western emphasis on fresh milk for drinking is really weird compared to uses of milk in the rest of the world.” She points to fresh plain yogurt, butter, cultured buttermilk, fresh cheeses as better uses for milk – and included more than 100 recipes along with a history of the milk industry.
She Sells Sea Shells
World Class Tongue Twisters
by Seymour Chwast (Applesauce Press)
New Yorker magazine cartoonist Chwast, who co-founded the Push Pin graphics studio in 1954, gives new life to 25 classic tongue twisters with his vividly colorful old-school illustrations. “Giddy gladiators grow gladiolas,” anyone?
I Want to Take You Higher
The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone
by Jeff Kaliss (Backbeat Books)
The San Francisco-based author managed to interview the reclusive Sly Stone for his band bio (although he didn’t get too much). Arranging it, Kaliss tells us, was “like seeking an audience with the Pope.” But when they did get together, he says, “The tone of our interchange was more like two middle-aged guys sitting down at the kitchen table and talking about music and family. Sly was quite humble and personable, and frailer than I’d envisioned him, though he still holds strong opinions and speaks them in a deep, potent voice.”
Christopher Walken A to Z
by Robert Schnakenberg (Quirk Books)
Christopher Walken certainly has a wide range. Two of his best-known roles are his Oscar-winning performance as a troubled Vietnam vet in “The Deer Hunter” and his over-the-top work in the “SNL” Cowbell sketch. But there’s plenty in between, and this reverential “A to Z” mines them all.
The Dracula Dossier
by James Reese (William Morrow)
Mimicking Bram Stoker’s style in “Dracula,” Reese tells his story through journal entries and letters (plus loads of footnotes). And what a bloody story it is: Set in 1888 London, Stoker becomes embroiled in the sensational Jack the Ripper case – becoming a suspect when the murder weapon is a ghurka knife stolen from his home. With the help of friends such as Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde’s mom, Lady Jane, he goes about clearing his name.