Eating Bitter, a Chinese American Saga is a richly textured biography charting the long lives of Paul and Sonia Ho. It is about survival of the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, the Communist Revolution and the prejudices the family encountered as immigrants to the United States. It is about memory - and conflicting memories. Eating Bitter is, above all, an American success story. It was Paul and Sonia’s eldest son, David, whose groundbreaking work on AIDS made him Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 1996 and, a few years later, won him the Presidential Citizens Medal.

The champion of uncelebrated foods including fat, offal, and bones, Jennifer McLagan turns her attention to a fascinating, underappreciated, and trending topic: bitterness. What do coffee, IPA beer, dark chocolate, and radicchio all have in common? They’re bitter. While some culinary cultures, such as in Italy and parts of Asia, have an inherent appreciation for bitter flavors (think Campari and Chinese bitter melon), little attention has been given to bitterness in North America: we’re much more likely to reach for salty or sweet. However, with a surge in the popularity of craft beers; dark chocolate; coffee; greens like arugula, dandelion, radicchio, and frisée; high-quality olive oil; and cocktails made with Campari and absinthe—all foods and drinks with elements of bitterness—bitter is finally getting its due. In this deep and fascinating exploration of bitter through science, culture, history, and 100 deliciously idiosyncratic recipes—like Cardoon Beef Tagine, White Asparagus with Blood Orange Sauce, and Campari Granita—award-winning author Jennifer McLagan makes a case for this misunderstood flavor and explains how adding a touch of bitter to a dish creates an exciting taste dimension that will bring your cooking to life.

A Fox News reporter takes a satirical look at serious culture war issues--everything from religion and healthcare to whoopee pie vs. sweet potato pie--getting input from celebrities and everyday folks along the way.

The history of food is not as straightforward as it may seem. Food isn't just food. It is ritual, tradition and memory. So begins Ann Cooper's groundbreaking new book on the history of sustenance. Cooper, a renowned chef and graduate of New York's famed Culinary Institute of America, expertly guides us from the roots of agriculture in North America through the profound changes initiated by the Industrial Revolution, all the way up to the present day, offering analyses of recent controversies such as Europe's campaign against Frankenstein food and the genetic engineering of plants and animals in the United States. Throughout, Cooper takes both a macro and micro approach, examining the effect politics, technology, war, international trade and agribusiness have had on the world's food supply, as well as the changing social patterns which have made a family meal at the table almost a relic of the past. Did you know? · 80% of chicken has salmonella. · By the year 2010, 95 percent of items bought at the grocery store may be consumed within 20 minutes of getting them home. · Cancer researchers believe that over one third of all future cancers will be diet-related -- roughly the same proportion now attributable to smoking. Passionate, political, informed and engaging, Bitter Harvest is filled with fascinating facts and anecdotes. Cooper offers a comprehensive analysis of the issue of sustainability, arguing persuasively why we must begin to change everything from the way food is shipped to the basic components of our diets. Touching on virtually every aspect of the food culture, Bitter Harvest is a vibrant example of the emergence of the chef as a political voice to be reckoned with. A food manifesto for the new millennium, it is a must-read for anyone concerned with health, nutrition and the future of our planet. You will never look at your dinner plate in quite the same way again.

An NPR Best Book of the Year "Unsettling and eerie, Bitter Orange is an ideal chiller." —Time Magazine From the author of Our Endless Numbered Days and Swimming Lessons, Bitter Orange is a seductive psychological portrait, a keyhole into the dangers of longing and how far a woman might go to escape her past. From the attic of Lyntons, a dilapidated English country mansion, Frances Jellico sees them—Cara first: dark and beautiful, then Peter: striking and serious. The couple is spending the summer of 1969 in the rooms below hers while Frances is researching the architecture in the surrounding gardens. But she’s distracted. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she finds a peephole that gives her access to her neighbors' private lives. To Frances’s surprise, Cara and Peter are keen to get to know her. It is the first occasion she has had anybody to call a friend, and before long they are spending every day together: eating lavish dinners, drinking bottle after bottle of wine, and smoking cigarettes until the ash piles up on the crumbling furniture. Frances is dazzled. But as the hot summer rolls lazily on, it becomes clear that not everything is right between Cara and Peter. The stories that Cara tells don’t quite add up, and as Frances becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of the glamorous, hedonistic couple, the boundaries between truth and lies, right and wrong, begin to blur. Amid the decadence, a small crime brings on a bigger one: a crime so terrible that it will brand their lives forever.

Guild of Food Writer’s Awards, Highly Commended in ‘First Book’ category (2021) In Bitter Honey, seasoned chef Letitia Clark invites us into her home on one of the most beautiful islands in the Mediterranean Sea – Sardinia. The recipes in this book do not take long to make, but you can taste the ethos behind every one of them – one which invites you to slow down, and nourish yourself with fresh food, friends and family. The importance of eating well is even more pronounced here on this forgotten island. Try your hand at Roasted Aubergines with Honey, Mint, Garlic and Salted honey, or a Salad of Pecorino with Walnuts and Honey, followed by Malloreddus (the shell-shaped pasta from the region) with Sausage and Tomato. Each recipe and the story behind it will transport you to the glittering, turquoise waters and laid-back lifestyle of this Italian paradise. With beautiful design, photography, full colour illustrations and joyful anecdotes throughout, Bitter Honey is a holiday, a cookbook and a window onto a covetable lifestyle in the sun – all rolled into one.

When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, Mao Zedong declared that "not even one person shall die of hunger." Yet some 30 million peasants died of starvation and exhaustion during the Great Leap Forward. Eating Bitterness reveals how men and women in rural and urban settings, from the provincial level to the grassroots, experienced the changes brought on by the party leaders' attempts to modernize China. This landmark volume lifts the curtain of party propaganda to expose the suffering of citizens and the deeply contested nature of state-society relations in Maoist China.

This shocking exposé of the corruption and exploitation at the heart of the multibillion-dollar cocoa industry is “an astounding eye-opener that takes no prisoners” (Quill & Quire, starred review). Bitter Chocolate is both an absorbing social history and a passionate investigation into an industry that has institutionalized abuse as it indulges our whims. Award-winning journalist Carol Off traces the fascinating evolution of chocolate from the sixteenth century banquet table of Montezuma’s Aztec court to the bustling factories of Hershey, Cadbury, and Mars. In what will be a shocking revelation to many, Off exposes how slavery and injustice remain a key aspect of its production even today. In the Ivory Coast, the world’s leading producer of cocoa beans, profits from the multibillion-dollar chocolate industry fuel bloody civil war and widespread corruption. Faced with pressure from a crushing “cocoa cartel” demanding more beans for less money, poor farmers have turned to the cheapest labor pool possible: thousands of indentured children who pick the beans but have never themselves known the taste of chocolate. “Bitter Chocolate is less a book about chocolate than it is a study of racism, imperialism and oppression as told through the lens of a single commodity.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Intimate, revealing, and refreshingly frank, Bitter Ice tells of a wife's search for independence and self while living in the shadow of her husband's battle with anorexia.