"Venceremos," the debut novel by Bath author Howard Waxman, has it all: Suspense, fast-paced action and sparkling dialogue. And its portrayal of 1970s hippie culture makes for a fascinating trip back in time.

Its hero is 21-year-old Jay Cardinale of Brooklyn, N.Y. We learn early in the book that he was drafted into the Army, where he became a Vietnam War hero during a firefight. A bayonet wound puts him out of action and, while home for recovery, he decides to desert.

On the lam, he falls in with hardcore anti-war activists, among them the despicable Roger Chumley, who accidentally -- or maybe deliberately -- kills Eddy McWilliams when a bomb Roger is making blows up in a Manhattan townhouse.

That's the background of the novel, all delivered in the first few pages. The rest of the 312-page book hinges upon a Faustian deal that Eddy's powerful and government-connected parents force on Cardinale: Kill Roger Chumley in return for a full pardon signed by the president.

They offer the deal through two frightening agents dressed in seersucker suits. "Take the offer or people you like will get hurt," one of them tells Cardinale. "People like your hippie friends. ... Take the deal and everyone stays healthy. Even back in Brooklyn (where Cardinale's ailing parents live)..."

Refusing at first, Jay changes his mind when the "seersuckers" get tough. He's given a bottle of poison to do in Roger, who's hiding out in Cuba. The agents supply him with a Canadian passport and an alibi for getting onto the forbidden island. He's instructed to hook up with the Venceremos Brigade, a cadre of committed lefties intent on helping Castro with the sugar-cane harvest. "Venceremos," title of both the novel and the brigade, is a rallying cry in Spanish meaning "we will prevail."

As preposterous as the plot may seem, Waxman's story comes across as flawless in the context of the 1970s. He tells the story in the first person from Jay Cardinale's viewpoint, and the suspense is palpable.

I particularly liked Waxman's use of anecdotes that illuminate the lives and morals of a hippie culture that was intense, laid-back and remarkably sexual.

Early in the book, for instance, before Jay goes to Cuba, he's in Golden Gate Park when he hears a woman yell, "Bill. Hey Bill.""Since my name is Jay," the narration goes, "it made no sense to look around. But I knew she meant me ..."

Jay then meets Sheri, the woman who called him "Bill." She tells him that she felt a strong "vibe" as he passed and that his turning "was proof that the vibe between us was real. For the next several weeks, Jay and Sheri hang out at Big Sur, "sleeping out on the beach, making love in the rain, and generally having a fine time." Eventually, they wind up at a commune in Vancouver, where Sheri renames herself "Wildflower."

Other neat little humorous anecdotes fit the book into its time and place, among them a description of life on the boat bound for Cuba. Meetings on board intended to build solidarity apparently fell short of their mission.

"The blacks had their own meetings and the women had their meetings," Jay narrates to readers, "and the white men had trouble figuring out where they belonged. What was our common identity except we were white and men and were at fault for everything that was wrong?"

Like his main character, Waxman grew up in Brooklyn. He joined alternative theater productions in the 1960s and went on to become a playwright. His creations -- "Knuckle Sandwich," "Punk Rock Joan La Poucelle" and "Landslide" -- were produced by the Lion Theater Company in New York, among others. He's been a theater critic for Variety and is a two-time winner of the Wisconsin Arts Board Playwriting Fellowship.

"Venceremos" is poignant, nostalgic and at times very funny. It's a mystery that dwells on big issues such as war and social change. The book's a winner that I heartily recommended.

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The cramped and bustling city formerly known as Bombay has Dickensian qualities. Minutes away from some of the most expensive real estate in the world, you can find tubercular families living in concrete drainage pipes. The scale of Mumbai’s divisions may explain why, in recent years, the city has been the subject of nonfiction of the highest quality: Meenal Baghel’s Capote-style reconstruction of a sensational murder, Death in Mumbai; Sonia Faleiro’s Beautiful Thing, an eye-popping study of bar dancers; and Suketu Mehta’s bestseller, Maximum City.

The title of Katherine Boo’s remarkable new contribution to the genre, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, evokes the shocking social polarity endemic to Mumbai. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist has established herself as a leading chronicler of the disadvantaged, whose struggles she depicts in extraordinary detail and without sentimentality. Such is her reportorial technique: to hang around in desperate places—from destitute pockets of Oklahoma City to homes for the mentally impaired—for months or even years, until she becomes a fly on the wall, a rat on the floor. And in a place like Annawadi, a slum on the fringes of Mumbai’s airport, life is so frantic that its inhabitants have more to worry about than a tenacious foreign reporter and her interpreter.

The author’s exceptional access allows her to frame her study as a narrative, with beautifully defined protagonists, rather than as an overview. Boo also makes diligent use of records, requested under India’s 2005 freedom-of-information legislation, lending credibility to even the most dystopian descriptions.

The book’s guiding premise is that gaming the system is the only means of survival in Annawadi. “For the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity,” she writes, “corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained.” To quote a character in V. S. Naipaul’s novel A Bend in the River: “It isn’t that there’s no right and wrong here. There’s no right.” This is as far as you can get from Patrick Swayze in City of Joy.

Boo’s story begins with Abdul, a cautious and determined boy with a talent for finding trash: cans, cardboard, screws, foil, different types of plastic, anything that can be sorted and sold. His life unravels when he is arrested for involvement in the murder of a neighbor, known as One Leg, a woman who had previously drowned her daughter in a bucket. Abdul is innocent: One Leg had poured kerosene over her own head in a rage. Her immolation becomes the book’s moral pivot.

Vivid characters populate Behind the Beautiful Forevers under their real names. Consider the slumlord who owns nine horses, “two of which he’d painted with stripes to look like zebras” so he can hire them out for children’s parties. Or young Manju, who learns English literature by rote and is on her way to college. When her mother, Asha, organizes an event at a temple to impress a local politician (who fails to show), a beautiful eunuch appears and does a high-speed spinning dance, before answering questions on behalf of a goddess who has taken over his body.

To communicate the constant, suffocating pressure of living in Annawadi, the book concentrates on minute details, allowing us to see through the eyes of the undercity’s inhabitants. We follow a small boy dragging a piece of scrap iron wrapped in a bedsheet through a swamp in the dark. We watch as the same boy, after discovering “a jamun-fruit tree where parrots nested,” decides not to catch and sell the birds but to encourage others to leave them alone. We witness Abdul being released from prison and trying to start over with his trash collecting under the boiling April sun.

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The year is 1882. Doc Holliday, consumptive dentist, alcoholic, and famed gunslinger, finds himself on a collision course with Billy the Kid. He needs money to spend his last days in a sanitarium and the best way to get it is to kill the Kid and collect the bounty.

That is the premise of Mike Resnick's The Doctor and the Kid: A Weird West Tale (Weird West Tales). It sounds like a typical Western. It is filled with authentic people who were in the West in 1882, including Thomas Edison, Susan B. Anthony, Oscar Wilde, and Ned Buntline, and with Holliday's actual associates like Pat Garrett and Big Nose Kate, Holliday's sometime lover.

But then strangeness creeps in. In this Wild West, there is real and powerful Indian magic, with Geronimo protecting Doc and the equally powerful medicine man Hook Nose protected the Kid so that neither can harm the other. Also, there are robots, including robot prostitutes and bartenders, and Doc has to kill his best friend Johnny Ringo again after Johnny has already died once and been brought to life by Indian magic, so there are zombies (and a chance for Resnick to poke a little fun at friend and fellow author John Ringo.)

So robots, zombies and then there are the fantastic weapons Tom Edison creates for Doc, using electricity, ultrasound, and supersonic waves. We're not at the OK Corral anymore, Doc! The book has a steampunk feel and it does add amazing futuristic elements to an alternative past, but perhaps Resnick has invented a new genre which might be called "electricpunk!"

The author has also created surprisingly sympathetic characters in Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid, and thrown in a bit of romance as Doc contemplates a possible relationship with a female bounty hunter before his disease kills him.

The Doctor and The Kid is a lot of fun, and Resnick mixes fact and fantasy so expertly that you never have too much trouble going on with his alternate universe for the length of the story. It's violent, funny, outrageous, and thoroughly enjoyable.

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Julia Bailey bet a goodly portion of the family nest egg on the success of Julia’s Child, her start-up company that offered organic, wholesomely, prepared food for toddlers. Using recipes developed for her own two toddlers and marketed with catchy names like Gentle Lentil and Its Not Easy Being Green Beans, getting market placement should have been easy but as Julia discovers, it’s tough just being granted an interview. As Julia struggles to get her company launched, she must cope with caring for her two little boys, deal with the possibility that the attractive nanny has designs on her husband, equipment breakdowns, organic certification and the very real possibility that her husband will be laid off shortly.

Dedication and hard work finally begin to pay off, but even limited success comes with a steep price, as Julia must spend more time away from home. Balancing career demands while being the kind of wife and mother she envisions proves more difficult then Julia imagined so it is little wonder she missed a few important details. A national television spot could change everything for Julia’s Child if Julia has the courage to stand up for what is important and right.

Pinneo combines her experience in finance with a love of good food to create a bright, fun story that mothers of finicky eaters will instantly relate to. The characters are authentic as they react to situations in a realistic manner in this nicely paced tale set in the Big Apple. Many of Pinneo’s descriptions are laugh-out-loud funny and sprinkled throughout are easy to make, kid friendly recipes that even include tips on how to get your youngster involved in the prep work. This is a treat, especially for moms dealing with all the trials of the terrible twos.

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Do you remember the girl in your school (doesn't matter what school, what age) who everyone knew because she was a big winner? Maybe the girl was the one who won all the spelling bees, got the highest standardized test score, sold the most Girl Scout cookies, earned the most badges - in fact, so many badges she needed two sashes to hold them all . you get the picture. Some would say that girl had an "accomplishment addiction."

Author Ronda Beaman, in her memoir Little Miss Merit Badge, describes the parental attention-disorder environment that bred such an addiction in her at a young age. Her parents were extremely good looking, and her father had been captain of the high school basketball team, used to adulation. But sometime after their high school graduation, her parents got married with baby Ronda on the way. From the word go, Ronda (and subsequent siblings) was in an unknowing competition with her father for attention. She compensated by becoming overly ambitious.

Beaman writes with humor and empathy, both for herself and other members of her family, even as she provides the reader with clear examples of why she never knew what would come out of her father's mouth next. He once told fourth-grade Ronda, who was worrying about taking America's Math Proficiency Exam, that everyone has an IQ, even her. The memoir is rife with examples of her father's backhanded compliments and mean or thoughtless comebacks to the most innocent of comments. Ronda and her siblings had to be careful not to get too excited or show too much emotion about anything for fear of being put down for it. "The decree by which we all were governed was that no one in our family could be smarter, funnier, better looking, or more well-liked than my father."

Imagine being that girl and feeling the need to prove yourself every few months because your family kept moving - two, three, four times a year, say. You had no chance to develop long-lasting relationships, and the father who was causing all those moves kept giving you mixed messages about your worth. The more Ronda was denied reassurance or success, the harder she strove for it. One year her resourcefulness in collecting S&H Green stamps, cereal box tops, and Bazooka Joe comics (all redeemable for prizes she could sell or trade up from) resulted in funding her own way to Girl Scout Camp for a week.

Beaman is forthright about her own misdeeds. Perhaps you can forgive young Ronda for faking as many successes as she actually achieved. "My first badge attempt was keeping a diary to earn the Write All About It badge . I lied on every page . I like to think of my fiction as early signs of creativity. With sheer pluck and perspicacity I wrote about the life I wanted, rather than the life I had."

Beaman has organized the chapters in her memoir around the names of twelve of the badges earned during her time in the Scouts. In a life-changing scene, seventh-grade Ronda learns that she is not invincible and cannot rely on fakery to get true companionship and self-respect. She starts working on earning a Healthy Relationships badge. This can be difficult if you mark the passage of time with phrases like "about three houses ago" and can honestly say your earlier childhood did not include a true mentor, role model, or good friend.

Thankfully, through the moral compass experiences provided early on by Girl Scouts and through careful, intelligent observation of what worked and what didn't work, Beaman built a good life for herself and others. She reflects on the paths people's lives take: "It's as if everyone is born with an empty [Scout] sash . and we each get to choose which badges we merit and which badges we rebuff due to lack of interest, desire, talent, or capability."

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Bainbridge Island, WA (Special to Huntingtonnews.net) -- I hate war -- and question the sanity and intent of anyone who thinks war is anything but destruction and terror, even when fought in defense of nations and the world.  Often wars are rackets for the profit of those who supply the means to conduct them.

And I have written extensively on the subject even as I have served for about 14 years in the Regular Army of the United States and the Reserve, both as an enlisted man and officer --serving with some of the most  intelligent and ethical people I have ever known.

As a longtime critic of the 'Military-Industrial Complex', so named in his Jan. 17, 1961 Farewell Address by the late President Dwight Eisenhower (see link to the address at the end of this review), I greeted the chance to review an anniversary commentary with great personal enthusiasm.

"The Military-Industrial Complex at 50" (Published by David Swanson, Charlottesville, VA, $25.00)  was unfortunately not what I had expected and hoped for:  a clear quantification and evaluation of what had occurred in the years since Ike gave it a name.

I was disappointed.

Before anything else, I should emphasize that what is in this 368-page volume is a collection of sincere and passionate commentary. What is not present in the book is an acceptable and objective recitation of what has evolved that could be useful.

What I did find was a collective indictment of the United States of America and the State of Israel with here and there opinions suggesting or outright asserting that America and Israel have waged all sorts of wanton slaughter around the world.

It might have helped as widely ranging as this book is had it included a detailed subject index so the reader, and this reviewer, could trace sources and details.  Instead, there are about a dozen pages of "Notes" from references that make it virtually impossible and far too time consuming to go back and forth to check commentary.

All that said, one of the commentaries that struck me as both groundless and naïve was that of Helena Cobban, indicated as a former reporter for ABC News and BBC, among others.  As with other writers, the lady is offered as having "expertise" with respect to Middle Eastern diplomacy and politics.  Unfortunately, though listed as a reporter, there is little question her biases do not permit her to include the many atrocities visited upon here chief and consistent target: Israel.

What I called naïve was her  her comment on page 306 of the book in which she asserts:  ...."We're told that the people who are ruling Gaza, who were elected authorities....are irrational, Islamist madmen who want to oppress women.  Not true."

She goes on to say she met four "elected Hamas women parliamentarians" and they were all very nice.

I have not been able to find the commentaries about their being madmen, etc.  However, anyone with slightest knowledge of Hamas and Hizbollah need  not take a college course to find not only their declarations to destroy Israel but to deny the Holocaust, a denial that is endemic in the Arab world.  Beyond that, and within only recent days, a major appointee of the Palestinian Authority declared the need to destroy all Jews, period.

Furthermore, as far back as 2009, The Washington Institute reported that stemming the flow of arms into Gaza will enhance regional stability. Much of this weaponry is provided by Iran, and specifically by the IRGC, increasing Iran's regional influence while threatening the position of Fatah in Palestinian politics. Dealing effectively with these tunnel systems could curtail Iranian influence. Conversely, if Gaza remains a terror base -- a safe haven for extremists and global jihadists -- regional instability and Palestinian suffering will surely grow.

Neither Ms Cobban nor any of the other anti-Israel writers mentioned the slaughters of schoolchildren in Ma'alot by terrorists, the murder of a wheelchair bound old man on the Achille Lauro, the 1972  murder of Israeli Olympic Athletes in Munich and hundreds of other atrocities.  Mostly, they avoid the reality Israel was given a rebirth by the United Nations and was promptly attacked by several Arab nations who could not destroy the newly minted nation.

In the end, this one point is beside the fact the book's title has misused President Eisenhower's powerful warning about the Military Industrial Complex as well as the heroic US Marine Corps hero General Smedley Butler, the only American ever to win two Medals of Honor.

As noted earlier, I had hoped for an objective assessment of the business of the Military Industrial Complex and the misuse of such combinations....not a naked effort to use that historic review by President Eisenhower to become the chief court of condemnation only of the United States and Israel with only the most modest understanding of other forces at work.

If one wishes to be a judge of history, historical fact and objectivity are useful but not part of this book which arrived wrapped in a T-shirt  showing a pair of handcuffs and the declaration calling for the arrest of Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama.

The book, however impassioned the authors and their widely scattered commentaries on their ideas of history, failed to be the needed legitimate history of this issue.Frankly, and my own bias, the authors and publisher seem unwilling to accept virtually any kind of even a legitimate force to defend the US and certainly not Israel.  That virtually diminishes the energetic effort as a credible review of a massively important subject.

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I haven’t seen “Justified” on FX, but you don’t have to have seen it either to enjoy the low-key dramatic splendors of Elmore Leonard’s new novel, Raylan.

It focuses on the character of U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens. In fact, you don’t have to watch any TV at all. Raylan is really a vivid movie-like experience. The book turns into a handheld device that delivers word-filled pages, speeding the story along in your mind without any help from director, actors, cameramen, extras, set decorators and costumers. Nobody but you and the words on the page, and you’re off and running. Or dreaming, as John Gardner used to put it, while awake.

Perhaps if he had spent a writing lifetime focusing on circus performers or bankers or chefs or naval chiefs or teachers or firefighters, Leonard would have produced a different variety of prose, something not so silky and subtle and yet so full of speed as what he has given to us over the years. I don’t know. As it happens, he chose the underworld and the world just above it — the world of law — as his main territory. And like the lawmen and some of the bad men in Leonard’s early Westerns, and like many of the main actors in many of Leonard’s crime novels set in and around Detroit and Miami, Raylan Givens is quick to draw — if drawn upon — and shoots to kill.

You can say the same thing about his creator. With a practiced ease and the craft of more than half a century of novelistic composition, Leonard works like the Picasso of crime fiction, deftly sketching in his characters by means of carefully shaped dialogue and keenly detailed physical action with such seemingly offhand skill that the novels often overtake the reader with their straightforward momentum and their incisive psychology of those who live beneath and outside the law. Reading his pages is like filling up on chocolates that are good for you.

In this new novel, for instance, three main sequences flow smoothly one into the other — Raylan, having killed a suspect in Florida and now posted back to his home turf of Kentucky, goes after the brainless sons of a vastly successful marijuana farmer who have been stealing kidneys from hapless victims. (Says Raylan of this situation: “What I don’t see, what these pot growers are doing yanking out people’s kidneys. They aren’t making it sellin weed? I’ve heard a whole cadaver, selling parts of it at a time? Will go for a hundred grand. But you make more you sell enough weed, and it isn’t near as messy as dealin kidneys.”)

Our sure-thinking, dead-shot deputy bests the country boys, a former stable hand posing as an African, and a scalpel-toting surgical nurse. This segues into cases in which a mining company employee blows away a neighbor with a complaint, and a widowed granny turns into a shotgun-toting killer.

Our valiant lawman then gallantly takes on the care of a spunky college girl turned champion poker player while working a case that involves a murderous club-owning thug who sends his young strippers out to rob banks in exchange for drugs.

The kidney-theft caper sets a darkly comic tone, and the mining murder does not add much cheer to these pages, though, as in the final section, the alacrity and buoyancy of Leonard’s narrative, which rushes along fueled by the dramatic edge of his brilliant dialogue and brings every bad guy (and girl) to justice, makes a reader want to stand up and shout: “Mission accomplished!”

Nothing is pure. Leonard still has to use words when he writes for us. But Raylan is as close as it gets to creating the complete illusion of unmediated entertainment on the page.

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DOGS no doubt evolved to provide an utilitarian role for their human masters, protecting them against lions, tigers, sabre toothed beasties and baddies trying to steal their food, wives and the cave man’s equivalent of electrical goods. But if one is prepared to open one’s emotions to them, their contribution to our daily existence becomes much more significant. And, occasionally, at the right time, the ideal canine personality enters our lives. This happened to Caryl Moll.

Her husband presented the family with a bundle of fluffy mischief at a time when Caryl was reluctant to accept further domestic responsibility. But as time progressed, and a series of personal crises pushed her into a deep depression, her relationship with the maturing golden retriever was the catalyst for her recovery. During this process she avoided personal contact but compensated by finding solace through her computer, eventually starting her own blog based on the life of Max, her canine saviour. This provided her with an outlet for a dormant love of writing and also fostered her relationship with her dog.

But in the latter stages of his life, Max was diagnosed with cancer and the roles became reversed. Caryl now uses her blog as an inspirational account of Max’s dying days and draws heartfelt emotional support from her escalating cyber family, reaching a readership of 200 people and eliciting over 9 000 comments. The book is an account of this process. It is simply written and uses multiple extracts from the blog “The Adventures of Maxdog”.

It has its weaknesses, however. The prose is naive and is unlikely to win any plaudits from the literary purists. It is also fairly pedestrian and drags on a bit, losing my interest at times. I decided to put the book to the ultimate test. Two esteemed and long-standing members of the Out of Town book club were tasked with submitting their opinions. These are women who will consume a riveting read in one sitting but who will also ditch an inadequate book midstride. Critics of note. Neither completed the read.

Which is a pity because the poignancy escalates towards the end, highlighting the depth and complexities of the human-dog relationship, and this is the strength of the book. The person and his or her pet will have some sort of relationship, varying in strength and history, and often, like Caryl and Max, the emotional attachment is immense. The acknowledgement and understanding of this fact is fundamental to all who make their living tending to animals and should help to formulate our service to them. It is for this reason that I will ensure that all the staff members of our veterinary practice read this book.

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The economy is shaky and the political climate is uncertain. We've been facing tough times for a while, and even the most optimistic of us could use some modicum of comfort, at least at the table. These may all be factors contributing to the huge surge of Italian cookbooks that have been published in the last year. It makes sense that Italian would be the "it" cuisine now -- when we're feeling unsettled, there's nothing more comforting than a plate of pasta and meatballs.

Recipes included with this story: Orchiette With Broccoli Rabe, Meatballs in Swiss Chard-Tomato. Sauce.

Though it's true that Italian cookbooks are pretty standard, and you probably don't need another one on your bookshelf, not all Italian cookbooks are cut from the same cloth, or pasta sheet, as the case may be. We've flipped through a parade of the usual suspects (Mario, Lidia and even a "real" New Jersey housewife have done books in 2011), but the Italian cookbooks we found the most compelling came from food writers and some not-on-the-Food Network chefs. In these books, the emphasis is on reconnecting with "real" food -- the authentic, thrifty and healthful cooking that epitomizes what Italians eat every day and the very essence of what makes Americans continue their love affair with Italian cooking, and cookbooks. We've paged through, and cooked through, a mountain of Italian cookbooks in the last year, so we thought we'd share our favorites. Buon appetito!

If you're busy, but want to eat healthy, even on weeknights ... "Rustic Italian," by Domenica Marchetti ($29.95, Weldon Owen, 2011) is the book for you. It features more than 100 recipes organized by courses and focusing on fuss-free dishes inspired by seasonal vegetables with beautiful pictures of almost every recipe. Marchetti, author of four books including the award-winning "The Glorious Pasta of Italy," learned how to cook at her Abruzzian mother's apron strings. The familial connection is heard clearly in her personal headnotes, which make this feel like a kitchen table recipe swap with a very dear, very talented Italian friend.

Most recipes in "Rustic Italian" are six ingredients or fewer and rely on fresh, seasonal vegetables and familiar recipes with contemporary twists -- meatballs are tossed with Swiss Chard-Tomato Sauce, Oil-Cured Tuna uses healthful whole wheat penne pasta, Pan-Seared Pork Chops come cooked with seasonal Meyer lemons, and farro, a rustic relative of wheat that has become something of a rock star on menus lately, is used throughout the book in everything from soups to a stuffing for fish.

Most Italian cookbooks throw out a few typical side dishes, but as Marchetti asserts in her lengthy "contorni" chapter, "Vegetables in Italy are never a sideshow, even when they are meant to be served on the side." Just so, there's loads of tantalizing dishes like Spring Asparagus and Asiago Gratin, and Baked Red Endive With Tomatoes and Pancetta that could easily make a meal. Even the dessert chapter is full of farmers market goodies, from moist Plum-Almond Cake to Melon Ice With Mint and Basil. With "Rustic Italian," Marchetti makes it easy and delicious to get your five-a-day, the Italian way. 

If you're interested in simple, authentic Italian food and love National Geographic ... pick up a hefty copy of "The Country Cooking of Italy" ($50, Chronicle Books, 2011). This tome, part coffee-table book, part study of traditional Italian cooking, offers plenty of elemental recipes you'll want to dog-ear. Based on 40 years of visits to Italy, former editor-in-chief of Saveur magazine Colman Andrews digs into the authentic cooking of provincial Italy with the eye of a food anthropologist and the humor of a bon vivant with a one-way ticket to trattoria-ville.

Unusual regional recipes like Jota (Istrian bean and sauerkraut soup), Mappina (Calabrian marinated lettuce) and Malloreddus (small saffron gnocchi from Sardinia) will probably be new to you, but Andrews' vivid descriptions and photographers Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton (Canal House Cookbooks) will give you the urge to cook, or at least lick the pages. There are probably more recipes for offal, wild game and goat than the average cook needs, but thankfully, the book is interspersed with gastronomic history lessons, personal anecdotes and even an entry on pasta names and translations (ziti means bridegrooms; cazetti d'angeli is a bit more anatomical in origin). All these make the book a good read, even away from the stove.

Andrews includes a balance of familiar recipes from the "farmers and winemakers and shopkeepers and just plain food-loving citizens" he's met while gamboling around rural Italy as well. The difference between these recipes and every other Italian cookbook out there is that these recipes are written by an eight-time James Beard award winner, so you know he's done them a thousand times and they will turn out perfectly. This is one pretty book that is going to need a slipcover to protect it from olive oil splatters and sauce stains. 

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Enchanting retelling--and a 1993 Western States Book Award winner--of a tribal legend about two old women, left behind to die, who instead went on to survive and thrive. Wallis--one of 13 siblings with their roots in the Athabaskan tribe of Alaska--used to listen to her mother tell stories every night after the day's hard work was done. The story of the two old women was a favorite: In a winter of famine, the tribe decides to leave behind two elderly women, who although mobile and somewhat productive, complain constantly and require assistance. Some people are shocked and distressed, but no one, including the daughter of one of the women, speaks up, afraid of precipitating violence in the tribe. As the tribe marches off, the two women, 75 and 80 years old, vow they will ``die trying.

'' They manage to catch a few rabbits and a squirrel to sustain them, then set off to a campsite miles away where, they recall, food is more abundant. They reach their goal, survive the winter, and spend the summer laying in a store of foodstuffs that will eventually sustain the whole tribe when it returns in search of them. Wallis recounts the tale here in simple but vivid detail, describing a life of unremitting labor in an extraordinary landscape. The story speaks to many modern concerns--abandonment or isolation of old men and women in nursing homes and retirement communities; the elderly's perhaps unwitting view of themselves as a privileged elite, but one which greatly underestimates its capabilities; the way in which the greatest good for the greatest number can lead to injustice and even cruelty, and in which trust, once broken, takes time and hard work to repair. Full of adventure, suspense, and obstacles overcome--an octogenarian version of Thelma and Louise triumphant.

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