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For more than sixty years, the imagination of Ray Bradbury has opened doors into remarkable places, ushering us across unexplored territories of the heart and mind while leading us inexorably toward a profound understanding of ourselves and the universe we inhabit. In this landmark volume, America's preeminent storyteller offers us one hundred treasures from a lifetime of words and ideas. The stories within these pages were chosen by Bradbury himself, and span a career that blossomed in the pulp magazines of the early 1940s and continues to flourish in the new millennium. Here are representatives of the legendary author's finest works of short fiction, including many that have not been republished for decades, all forever fresh and vital, evocative and immensely entertaining.

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The opening of Greens Restaurant on San Francisco Bay in 1979 changed forever the image of vegetarian cooking in America   From the restaurant's imaginative mix of casual elegance, exciting tastes, and a subtle message of health and harmony, a distinctive cuisine was born that has continued to bring joy to many thousands of diners every year as well as to the hundreds of thousands of readers who delight in The Greens Cookbook. In its latest incarnation, the restaurant has evolved toward a lighter, leaner, simpler cuisine, one that keeps all the spirit and refinement of the original menu but depends more on the excitement of sparkling fresh produce and its integral relationship to the dishes it inspires.

In close to 300 original recipes, the new Greens style includes exuberant salads, soups, the legendary crusty Greens pizzas, curries and hearty stews, grilled vegetables, and intriguing turnovers made with filo pastry, tortillas, and savory doughs.  And of course there are heavenly breads and the famous desserts, like ginger pound cake with poached apricots and cherries.  This cornucopia of brilliant dishes focuses on tantalizing tastes, with a new simplicity, clarity, and liveliness as its hallmark.

Annie Somerville, the executive chef at Greens, goes right to the heart of the matter: extraordinary produce that's bursting with flavor, color, and texture.  Some of her favorites--like crinkly Bloomsdale spinach, candy-striped Chioggia beets, succulent Rosefir potatoes--are highlighted in the text for gardeners and farmers' market aficionados.  But the Greens style is above all accessible; ordinary red beets will be just fine if more exotic varieties are unavailable.  To help with availability, there's information on locating farmers' markets throughout the country as well as sources for plants, seeds, and local resources.

Because the garden is at the center of this book, readers are encouraged to try their hand, in tiny backyards and windowsill boxes if necessary.  Invaluable growing tips are offered from Green Gulch Farm, the source of much of the stunning produce served at the restaurant.  Other special features include a section on low-fat cooking and another on pairing wine with vegetarian food.

All of the abundance and exuberance that the title Fields of Greens implies is here, for the novice as well as the expert, for simple last-minute meals as well as extravagant occasions.  For truly inspired contemporary vegetarian cooking, Fields of Greens is the essential sourcebook.


Annie Somerville trained under Deborah Madison, the founding chef at Greens Restaurant.  Under Somerville's guidance as executive chef, Greens has become a culinary landmark.  Her work has been featured in Gourmet, Food & Wine, Ladies' Home Journal, SF, and California magazine.  She also contributed to The Open Hand Cookbook and Women Chefs cookbook..
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The touching, hilarious memoir of legendary stripper Gypsy Rose Lee reveals her childhood trouping across 1920s America as the rear end of a cow in vaudeville Her rise to stardom as The Queen of Burlesque in 1930s New York occurred when gin came in bathtubs, gangsters were celebrities and Walter Winchell was king.

Filled with an outrageous cast of characters, including Broadway's funny girl, Fanny Brice, who taught Gypsy how to be a star; gangster Waxy Gordon, who fixed her teeth; and her indomitable mother, Rose, who lived by her own version of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others... before they do you.".
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Everyday Greens

Home Cooking from Greens, the Celebrated Vegetarian Restaurant

For more than twenty years, San Francisco's beloved Greens Restaurant has been in the avant garde of the cooking revolution in America Through its endlessly inventive, ever-changing menus and bestselling cookbooks, Greens has introduced millions of delighted fans to a sophisticated, meatless cuisine packed with transcendent, satisfying flavor.

The innovation continues. Everyday Greens is the first Greens book in a decade, and author Annie Somerville, executive chef since 1985, has written the most accessible cookbook yet. Greens's high level of flavor and creativity is everywhere, but the cooking is simpler, more relaxed. Here are more than 250 of the restaurant's most popular dishes fine-tuned for the home cook in straightforward recipes for the way we live today.

This is spirited cooking for every day -- from casual lunches and quick weeknight meals to family feasts and elegant entertaining. There are main-dish salads; soups that make a meal; rustic ragoûts; satisfying stews; vegetables on the grill; quick stir-fries; casseroles layered with flavor; innovative side dishes; pizzas, tortilla dishes, and savory tarts; pastas and risottos; warm beans and grains; sandwiches; salsas; pickles; and the famous Greens desserts.

The heart of Greens cooking is to use the best, freshest ingredients -- whether from the grocery store or your local farmers' market. Advice on finding and preparing these ingredients is combined with restaurant tips that simplify work in the kitchen. Through clever use of the freezer and pantry, Somerville shows how to minimize prep time with make-ahead dishes and born-again leftovers. Special features include pairing wine with Greens's food; advice on stocking the pantry with Asian ingredients, cooking oils, and dessert-making essentials; a resource guide for locally made cheeses; and the Kitchen Tool Box, a decidedly low-tech list of invaluable equipment. A final section on worm composting brings everything back to the source -- the earth -- and is sure to delight the passionate gardener.

Readers of Fields of Greens love Somerville's warm, inspiring, friend-in-the-kitchen style. And Everyday Greens is more personal, so confidence-building that even beginners will want to dash into the kitchen and start cooking..
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In 1954-1955, John F. Kennedy's active role as a Senator in the affairs of the nation was interrupted for the better part of a year by his convalescence from an operation to correct a disability incurred as skipper of a World War II torpedo boat. He used his "idle" hours to great advantage; he rediscovered, and did intensive research into, the courage and patriotism of a handful of Americans who at crucial moments in history had revealed a special sort of greatness: men who disregarded dreadful consequences to their public and private lives to do that one thing which seemed right in itself. These men ranged from the extraordinarily colorful to the near-drab; from the born aristocrats to the self-made. They were men of various political and regional allegiances—their one overriding loyalty was to the United States and to the right as God gave them to see it.

There was John Quincy Adams, who lost his Senate seat and was repudiated in Boston for his support of his father's enemy Thomas Jefferson; Sam Houston, who performed political acts of courage as dramatic as his heroism on the field of battle; Thomas Hart Benton, whose proud and sarcastic tongue fought against the overwhelming odds that insured his political death; and Edmond Ross who "looked down into his open grave" as he saved President Johnson from an impeachment; and Norris of Nebraska; and Taft of Ohio; and Lamar of Mississippi (who did as much as any one man to heal the wounds of civil war). There was Daniel Webster, scourged for his devotion to Union by the most talented array of constituents ever to attack a Senator. For the most part Kennedy's patriots are United States Senators, but he also pays tribute to such men as Governor Altgeld of Illinois and Charles Evans Hughes of New York.

And in the opening and closing chapters, which are as inspiring as they are revealing, Kennedy draws on his personal experience to tell something of the satisfactions and burdens of a Senator's job—of the pressures, both outward and inward—and of the standards by which a man of principle must work and live.

John F. Kennedy has used wonderful skill in transforming the facts of history into dramatic personal stories. There are suspense, color and inspiration here, but first of all there is extraordinary understanding of that intangible thing called courage. Courage such as these men shared, Kennedy makes clear, is central to all morality—a man does what he must in spite of personal consequences—and these exciting stories suggest the thought that, without in the least disparaging the courage with which men die, we should not overlook the true greatness adorning those acts of courage with which men must live.

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To answer the question, "What does Mediterranean mean and what is Mediterranean food" in The Mediterranean Feast, Clifford Wright delves into not merely history, but also agronomy, economics, geography, and more. He dedicates this monumental synthesis of the influences that eventually produced Mediterranean food as we know it to "the philosophers and the cooks." Fortunately, when it seems the intellectuals have taken over completely, one comes on Wright's lyrical description of eating a cassoulet, the golden-crusted, complex French bean stew, and other passages proving that Wright's intense quest for knowledge is based on a cook's culinary passion.

Illustrated with maps and brimming with more than 500 recipes, A Mediterranean Feast is Wright's way of leading the reader beyond the popular, romantic image of this region as an eternally bountiful land. He explains how the complex web of influences between the fall of the Roman Empire in the 6th century and the Age of Reason in the 17th century transformed the Mediterranean from a harsh place where poverty and famine made "dying of hunger ... a defining occurrence," to one we could romanticize, seeing it as ever lush with citrus, sun-ripe tomatoes, laden vines, exquisite cheeses, artisanal breads, and simple but well-fed folk. Those who rise to absorb the encyclopedic knowledge and engage with the ideas set forth in this dense work, such as the peasants' willingness to accept new, unfamiliar foods to relieve the boredom and scarcity of subsistence eating, will receive a profound education about Mediterranean life as it historically relates to food.

While A Mediterranean Feast feeds the mind, it also offers a wealth of authentic and intriguing dishes from the entire region, from France to Algeria and Spain to the Near East. Readers primarily interested in cooking can flip through this massive book, picking out remarkable recipes such as the pine nut omelet of southern France, Umm Ali, a creamy Egyptian pudding containing phyllo, nuts, coconut, and raisins, and Nohutlu Pilavi, the buttery Turkish pilaf of rice simmered with chickpeas. --Dana Jacobi.
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