Saturday, October 26, 2013

Book Stall Review: Red Tractors 1958-2013

The story of International Harvester and its distinctively red tractors is very much the story of modern American agriculture, adapting to dramatic changes in markets and technology and surviving near-extinction before rising to new heights in the 21st century with a new generation of machines.

Led by Lee Klancher, publisher at Octane Press, a team of writers, researchers and photographers obsessed with IH tractors and their story compiled this detailed account of the tractor manufacturer and its products, from the Farmall 40 and 60 series tractors to the MXM Maxxums. With its lavish photography and original concept drawings of red tractors, the substantial volume is a loving testament "to the skill, dedication, and hard work invested by the people who created and built them," Klancher states.

The Authoritative Guide to Farmall, International Harvester and Case IH Farm Tractors in the Modern Era by Lee Klancher, et al
Octane Press, 2013

continued in The Book Stall

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Review: Homegrown Honey Bees


This primer on beekeeping, composed by a man-and-wife team that kept close record of their own experiences, describes the first year of a beginner's beekeeping from planning, set-up and harvesting with loads of advice on what to expect and how to prepare.

"My husband, Mars, is a photographer and an obsessive documentarian," author Aletha Morrison explains. "During the first couple of years that we kept bees, he photographed how to install a new package of bees, light a smoker, inspect a hive, manage pests, harvest honey, and almost everything in between. We understood what beginners needed to know because we were learning ourselves at the same time."

An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Beekeeping
by Alethea Morrison
Storey Publishing, 2013
continued in The Book Stall

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Sunday, October 13, 2013

Farm and Garden Picks: Cereals and Pulses

Cereal and pulse crops are staple foods that provide essential nutrients to many populations of the world. Traditionally, whole grains were consumed but most current foods are derived from refined fractions of cereal and pulse crops. Consumption of processed or refined products may reduce the health benefits of food.

Cereals and Pulses: Nutraceutical Properties and Health Benefits provides a summary of current research findings related to phytochemical composition and properties of cereal and pulse crops.

Nutraceutical Properties and Health Benefits 
edited by Liangli L. Yu, et al.
Wiley-Blackwell, 2012

Friday, October 11, 2013

New Guide to Healing Crystals

Bestselling author Judy Hall presents a comprehensive guide to more than 400 powerful healing crystals, plus information about 150 newly discovered stones in this new edition of The Encyclopedia of Crystals.

Beautifully illustrated and effortless to navigate, the 2nd Edition is organized by crystal color for easy reference, relates the colors of the crystals to the chakras, and lets you know how to cleanse and activate them.

by Judy Hall
Fair Winds Press, 2013



Monday, October 7, 2013

Review: Charcuterie

Due to the unexpected success of the original edition of this book in 2005 and a surprising surge of interest in cooking heavily salted animal fats coupled with with authors' own continuing education in the subject, a revised and updated version of the text has been published eight years later.

Derived from French words for flesh and cooked, charcuterie - in the sense of salting, smoking, and cooking to preserve meats - has been around since the dawn of mankind, the authors point out. "It has been carried on in many forms through virtually every culture, and it has been one of the foundations of human survival in that it allowed societies to maintain a food surplus and therefor helped turn early peoples from nomads into clusters of homebodies...

"Historians have suggested that our ancestors first discovered cooked food in the form of animals that had perished in forest fires, and then began to cook food on purpose. Regardless of how they discovered cooking, they surely realized that cooking made food not only taste good but last longer as well."
The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing
by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn
W. W. Norton & Company, 2013
continued in The Book Stall

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Sunday, September 15, 2013

Reading the History of... A President in Yellowstone

For three weeks in August of 1883 the first sitting president to visit Yellowstone National Park, Chester Arthur, made an ambitious 330-mile overland trip from Green River, Wyoming, north to Mammoth Hot Springs with a 75-man military escort led by General Philip Sheridan.

It was the longest and most unusual vacation ever taken by a sitting President. The traveling party included Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln, the only surviving son of Abraham Lincoln, who commemorated the trip with a leather-bound album of photographs taken on the journey by a young photographer, F. Jay Haynes, along with the dispatches describing the President’s activities which were sent to the Associated Press.

This volume reprints much of that album, of which only six copies were ever made, and publishes more of Haynes' 130-year-old photographs of Yellowstone National Park and the President's party.

The F. Jay Haynes Photographic Album of Chester
Arthur's 1883 Expedition
by Frank H. Goodyear III
Continued in Out of the Past



Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Reading the History of... The Drunken Botanist

Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley, tequila from agave, rum from sugarcane, bourbon from corn. Thirsty yet?

In The Drunken Botanist, Amy Stewart explores the dizzying array of herbs, flowers, trees, fruits, and fungi that humans have, through ingenuity, inspiration, and sheer desperation, contrived to transform into alcohol over the centuries.

The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks
by Amy Stewart 
Algonquin Books, 2013