Reading the History: The Kentucky Derby

Each year on the first Saturday in May, the world turns its attention to the twin spires of Churchill Downs for the high-stakes excitement of the "greatest two minutes in sports," the Kentucky Derby. No American sporting event can claim the history, tradition, or pageantry that the Kentucky Derby holds. For more than 130 years, spectators have been fascinated by the magnificent horses that run the Louisville track. Thoroughbreds such as Secretariat and Barbaro have earned instant international fame, along with jockeys such as Isaac Murphy, Ron Turcotte, and Calvin Borel.

The Kentucky Derby: How the Run for the Roses Became America's Premier Sporting Event calls this great tradition to post and illuminates its history and culture.

The Kentucky Derby

How the Run for the Roses Became America's Premier Sporting Event

by James C. Nicholson

The University Press of Kentucky, 2012

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New Guides: Llewellyn's 2013 Witches' Spell-A-Day Almanac

Make every day magical with a spell from Llewellyn’s Witches’ Spell-A-Day Almanac. Spellcasters of all levels can enhance their daily life with these easy bewitchments, recipes, rituals, and meditations.

Susan Pesznecker, Tess Whitehurst, and other experienced magic practitioners offer simple spells for every occasion that require minimal supplies.

For convenience, the 365 spells are cross-referenced by purpose: love, health, money, protection, home and garden, travel, and communication.

Llewellyn's 2013 Witches' Spell-A-Day Almanac

Holidays & Lore

by Llewellyn

Llewellyn Publications, 2012

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Nature Pages: The Natural Navigator

British expeditionist Tristan Gooley has sailed across oceans, flown  between continents, and climbed many of the world's tallest mountains using the natural navigation skills described in this book.

While humans have been making their way from place to place for a millenia, there is no record of how the earliest travelers navigated, or how often they got lost. Accounts of navigation methods don't show up in anyone's literature until about a thousand years ago.

Gooley's obsession with the art of navigation began as an empowered 10-year-old sailing a dinghy. "I had garnered the skills to go wherever I wanted. Not where my teachers told me to go, not where my parents wanted me to go, but where I wanted to go."

This book explains how to find your way without GPS or even compasses, but with shadows, stars, tides, plants, clouds, the moon, the sun and wild animals. Also known as ‘wayfinding,’ natural navigation techniques can be used on land, sea or in mid-air.

The Natural Navigator

The Rediscovered Art of Letting Nature Be Your Guide

by Tristan Gooley

Linden Publishing, 2012 

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New Guides: Llewellyn's 2013 Herbal Almanac

Spice up your favorite dishes with French tarragon. Chase away stress with delicious soup. There are hundreds of ways to benefit from nature’s most versatile plants inside Llewellyn’s Herbal Almanac.

This treasury of innovative herbal ideas spans five categories: gardening, cooking, crafts, health/ beauty, and myth/lore.

Learn about endangered herbs, hyssop, and the apple in Nordic ritual. Discover how to whip up antioxidant-rich purple passion parfait, use herbs in energetic healing, relieve dry skin with a borage face pack, treat your feet to a wormwood bath, turn your garden into a wildlife paradise with minimal effort and cost, and much more.

Llewellyn's 2013 Herbal Almanac

Herbs for Growing & Gathering, Cooking & Crafts, Health & Beauty, History,

Myth & Lore

by Llewellyn

Llewellyn Publications, 2012

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Review: A Montana Table

Montana's famed resort, Chico Hot Springs, is celebrated in this volume with 100 of the most popular recipes from its well respected kitchen . Following a brief history of Chico, the book presents recipes from caramel rolls at breakfast to a Beef Wellington dinner and a Flaming Orange dessert. Special dinners are profiled and the sauces, stocks and dressings used by the chefs are detailed.

Located in Paradise Valley, just north of Yellowstone National Park, Chico Hot Springs is a remote resort most noted for its natural hot water pools. Only in the last 15 years or so has Chico's restaurant, now upscale with a classic and regional menu, begun to rival the popularity of its baths.

A Montana Table 

Recipes from Chico Hot Springs Resort 

by Seabring Davis 

Globe Pequot Press, 2003

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Review ~ Forks Over Knives

This book is a companion to the documentary "Forks Over Knives," which makes the claim that the most serious diseases of our time - cancer, diabetes, angina - can be controlled or prevented by not eating animal-based and processed foods. 


Forks Over Knives, and the recipes in this book, promote a plant-based diet using whole foods. The diet is a life-long commitment to minimally processed fruits, vegetables, whole grains, tubers, and legumes. Animal-based foods such as meat (including poultry and fish), dairy, and eggs are excluded or minimized along with refined foods such as bleached flour, refined sugar, and most oils.

The documentary and the diet are based on the research of two Drs. T. Colin Campbell and Caldwell B. Esselstyn, who believe a diet of plant-based food and grains can both prevent and reverse heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and various cancers. Both doctors contribute to this book along with a half dozen other medical professionals. The editor, Gene Stone, authored The Secrets of People Who Never Get Sick.

Forks Over Knives

The Plant-Based Way to Health

by Gene Stone

The Experiment, 2011

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Nature Pages: The Mountain and the Fathers

The Mountain and The Fathers explores the life of boys and men in the
unforgiving, harsh world north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana in
a drought afflicted area called the Big Dry, a land that chews up old and
young alike.

Joe Wilkins was born into this world, raised by a young mother and elderly
grandfather following the untimely death of his father. That early loss
stretches out across the Big Dry, and Wilkins uses his own story and those
of the young boys and men growing up around him to examine the violence,
confusion, and rural poverty found in this distinctly American landscape.

The Mountain and the Fathers

Growing Up on The Big Dry

by Joe Wilkins

Counterpoint, 2012

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