Category Archives: Books

Books, Celebrity Chatter

“Diving for Starfish” is a 14-karat mystery, wrapped among the rich and famous and 71 cabochon rubies and 241 amethysts

It’s a fascinating read, a sparkling mystery wrapped in the world of the super-rich and priceless jewels. Literally. In Diving for Starfish: The Jeweler, the Actress, the Heiress, and One of the World’s Most Alluring Pieces of Jewelry (St. Martin’s Press, 26.99), Cherie Burns takes readers on a search for a dazzling, elusive starfish pin—one of the most coveted pieces of jewelry in the world. 

Created in the early 1930’s by a young designer in the workroom of the famous Parisian jeweler Boivin, the starfish pin was distinctive because its five rays were articulated, meaning that they could curl and conform to the bustline or shoulder of the women who wore it. The House of Boivin crafted only three of these gold starfish, each one encrusted with 71 cabochon rubies and 241 small amethysts. The women who were able to capture the rare starfish were as fabulous as the pin itself.

Millicent Rogers, socialite and fashion icon, and Claudette Colbert, Hollywood leading lady, were two of the women adorned by one of the three pins that exist today. Obsessed with the pin after she saw it in the private showroom of a Manhattan jewelry merchant, Burns set off on a journey to find out all she could about the elusive pins and the women who owned them. Her search took her around the world to Paris, London, New York and Hollywood.

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Millicent Rogers wearing her starfish brooch.

Both a history of fine jewelry coming out of Paris in the Golden Age and a tour through the secretive world of high-end, privately-sold jewelry, Diving for Starfish is a stylish detective story with a glittering piece of jewelry and the equally dazzling women who loved them.

Books, Celebrity Chatter

The road to all things Broadway can be found in architect Fran Leadon’s “Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles”

They say the neon light are bright on Broadway. But Manhattan’s “Broadway” is much more than flashing marquees and glitzy shops. It is a 13-mile street stretch that runs from State Street at Bowling Green through the borough of Manhattan. (There’s 2 miles through the Bronx, exiting north from the city to run an additional 18 miles through the municipalities of Yonkers, Hastings-On-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington and Tarrytown, and terminating north of Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County.
Broadway is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in New York City, dating to the first New Amsterdam settlement, although most of it did not bear its current name until the late 19th century. The name Broadway is the English language literal translation of the Dutch name, Brede weg.

The road to all things Broadway can be found in architect Fran Leadon’s Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles (W.W. Norton, $35).

Broadway takes us on a mile-by-mile journey that traces the gradual evolution of the 17th-century’s Brede Weg, a muddy cow path in a backwater Dutch settlement, to the 20th-century’s Great White Way. We learn why one side of the street was once considered more fashionable than the other. We witness construction of the Ansonia Apartments, Trinity Church, and the Flatiron Building and the burning of P.T. Barnum’s American Museum. We discover that Columbia University was built on the site of an insane asylum.
Library of Congress
Our fave Broadway site: the Flatiron Building, way back when
Along the way we meet Alexander Hamilton; Edgar Allen Poe; John James Audubon; Emma Goldman; “Bill the Butcher” Poole; “Texas” Guinan, and the assorted real estate speculators, impresarios, and politicians who helped turn Broadway into a living paradigm of American progress, at its best and worst. With maps and more than 75 black-and-white photos throughout, Broadway tells the vivid story of what is arguably the world most famous thoroughfare.
Books

Historian William Hitchcock’s “The Age of Eisenhower” is an absorbing, serious biography at its best

Historian William Hitchcock shoots straight. Direct. And his news is factual truth. Witness an expert from his USA Today op-ed, published February 12.

“The last Army general to occupy the White House, Dwight D. Eisenhower, would be spinning in his grave if he knew that President Trump, a man who used a medical deferment to avoid combat service in Vietnam, was planning a giant military parade in Washington.”

The op-ed was a well-written reminder that The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s (Simon & Schuster, $35) was being released; Hitchcock’s massive tome is not only an absorbing, serious biography at its best, but it could (if needed) serve as a murder weapon.

Since I grew up long after the I LIKE IKE movement was around, I never had a chance to understand what the fuss was about. Now I do.

In a 2017 survey, presidential historians ranked Dwight D. Eisenhower fifth on the list of great presidents, behind the perennial top four: Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt. Hitchcock shows that this high ranking is justified. Eisenhower’s accomplishments were enormous and loom ever larger from the vantage point of our own tumultuous times. A former general, Ike kept the peace: He ended the Korean War, avoided a war in Vietnam, adroitly managed a potential confrontation with China, and soothed relations with the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death.

He guided the Republican Party to embrace central aspects of the New Deal like Social Security. He thwarted the demagoguery of McCarthy, and he advanced the agenda of civil rights for African Americans. As part of his strategy to wage and win the Cold War, Eisenhower expanded American military power, built a fearsome nuclear arsenal and launched the space race.

In his famous Farewell Address, he acknowledged that Americans needed such weapons in order to keep global peace, but he also admonished his citizens to remain alert to the potentially harmful influence of the “military-industrial complex”.

From 1953 to 1961, no one dominated the world stage as did President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Age of Eisenhower is the definitive account of this presidency, drawing extensively on declassified material from the Eisenhower Library, the CIA, and the Defense Department and troves of unpublished documents. In his masterful account, Hitchcock shows how Ike shaped modern America, and he astutely assesses Eisenhower’s close confidants, from Attorney General Brownell to Secretary of State Dulles.

The result is an eye-opening reevaluation that explains why this “do-nothing” president is rightly regarded as one of the best leaders our country has ever had.

Books

A full-dressed teen found at the bottom of her family’s pool. Dive into Mary Higgins Clark’s latest mystery, “I’ve Got My Eyes on You”

Some whine that Mary Higgins Clark is the Queen of “cut and paste”. Nonsense. Jackie Collins held that title.  Clark maintains the honor of being known as the “Queen of Suspense”.  Mary Higgins Clark remains in top form after more than 40 years of delivering hit suspense novels

Clark’s latest: I’ve Got My Eyes on You (Simon & Schuster, $26.99). What can we tell you about the page-turner? Just a bit to lure you into the mystery as we were . . .

After a party when her parents are away, 18-year-old Kerry Dowling is found fully dressed at the bottom of the family pool. The immediate suspect is her boyfriend who had a bitter argument with her at the party. Then there is a 22-year-old intellectually impaired neighbor who was angry because she didn’t invite him to the party.  Or is there someone else who is not yet on the radar screen?

Kerry’s older sister Aline, a 28-year-old guidance counselor, is determined to help the detective assigned to the case find the truth. She does not realize that now she is putting her own life in danger . . .

Books

The main reason we love Ruth Bader Ginsburg: She hates Adolph Frump as much as we do. Smart lady. And what quotes!

The main reason we love Ruth Bader Ginsburg:  She hates Adolph Frump as much as we do. Smart lady.

While she’s been a Supreme Court Justice for the past 25 years, Ginsburg is in the forefront of American politics and culture now more than ever before.

She is continually in the news for her opposition to the Frump administration. She is an icon to the modern feminist movement. On May 4 the documentary RBG, focusing on Justice Ginsburg’s life and career, will be released in selected theaters, and it has already been selected for the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

Need more Justice Ginsburg? Have her handy . . . and in your pocket. With nearly 150 quotes from RBG herself, You Can’t Spell Truth Without Ruth (St. Martin’s Press, $16.99) is the perfect handy-sized dose of motivation and inspiration for change-makers in the world today. Let RBG’s words on law and life from her past 25 years on the bench of the Supreme Court  give you courage to stand up and say, “I dissent.”

You Can't Spell Truth Without Ruth: An Unauthorized Collection of Witty & Wise Quotes from the Queen of Supreme, Ruth Bader GinsburgHer quotes are witty and wise. Think:

  • “If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.”

  • “As long as I can do the job full steam, I will do it.”

  • “Yes, there are miles in front, but what a distance we have travelled.”

Books

Noted photographer shares stunning images of a 21-year-old Cassius Clay in “Ali”

Yep. He was always the greatest. In June, 1963, on assignment from Sports Illustrated, peerless portrait photographer Steve Schapiro traveled to Louisville, Kentucky to spend some time with the young Olympic champion boxer Cassius Clay, and accompany him on a road trip to New York City. At 21, Clay was yet to adopt the mantle of Muhammad Ali, but his boastful persona, intelligence, black pride and sharp tongue were already fully formed.

Over the course of their five days together,  Sports Illustrated–a master at developing trust and capturing unguarded intimacy on film—revealed both sides of the young Ali: The one side posing and preening for the camera, ever conscious of his image; the other, unguarded and unselfconscious, in candid images of the young fighter at home with his family and immersed in his community and neighborhood.

And so we have Ali (powerHouse Books, $50)a luscious book that collects the best of Schapiro’s images of the late fighter; many in print for the very first time. They offer a glimpse of a star on the rise. It is an indelible portrait of the early life of one of the most talented, graceful, controversial, athletic, and influential American figures of the 20th century.

Books

His four-year-old daughter calls him Daddy. The law calls him inmate #174594. We call him a murderer

Football coaches, players and fans called him unstoppable.

His four-year-old daughter calls him Daddy.

The law calls him inmate #174594.

Aaron Hernandez  was a college All-American who became the youngest player in the NFL and later a Super Bowl veteran.

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He was a star tight end on the league-dominant New England Patriots, who extended his contract for a record $40 million.

Hernandez’s every move as a professional athlete played out
in the headlines, yet he led a secret life-one that ended in a maximum security prison.

What drove him to go so wrong, so fast? Son of a University of Connecticut football hero known as “the King” and brother to a Huskies quarterback, Hernandez was the best athlete Connecticut’s Bristol Central High had ever produced. He chose to play football at the University of Florida, but by the time he arrived in Gainesville, he was already courting trouble.

Between the summers of 2012 and 2013, not long after Hernandez made his first Pro Bowl, he was linked to a series of violent incidents culminating in the death of Odin Lloyd, a semi-pro football player who dated the sister of Hernandez’s fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins.

All-American Murder: The Rise and Fall of Aaron Hernandez (Little, Brown and Company, $28)  is the first book to investigate–from the unique vantage point of the world’s most popular thriller writer, James Patterson–Aaron Hernandez’s first-degree murder conviction and the mystery of his own untimely and shocking death.

Drawing on original and in-depth reporting, this is an explosive true story of a life cut short in the dark shadow of fame.

Books, TV

Take a few lessons from Addie Gundry and life will be slow . . . and awfully tasty!

Nothing says comfort food more than the aroma of a warm, slow cooked meal wafting through your home. In her newest cookbook Essential Slow Cooker Recipes: 103 Fuss-Free Slow Cooker Meals Everyone Will Love (St. Martin’s Griffin, $19.99), Food Network Star finalist Addie Gundry revolutionizes recipes for the perfect hearty slow cooked meal.From classics like pierogi casserole with sausage to Asian specialties like soba noodles with vegetables and orange chicken, Gundry has it covered. Simply put everything in a slow cooker, then sit back, relax and sniff.

A slow cooker is the ideal partner in crime when it comes to tackling dishes that can be too time and work-intensive for every day, like French onion soup or chicken cordon bleu. In her cookbook, Gundry goes way beyond the expected soups and stews offering up recipes for appetizers like BBQ meatballs, breads and make-ahead breakfasts like banana pecan French toast . . . not to mention slow cooker twists on beloved recipes like lasagna, meatloaf and stuffed peppers.

Recipes include:
Appetizers: Bacon Cheeseburger Dip, Honey Buffalo Chicken Sliders
Breakfast: Potato Puff Breakfast Casserole, Easy Artisan Bread
Classic Recipes: Melt-in-Your-Mouth Pot Roast, Pork Chops in Mushroom Sauce
Dinner Recipes: Chicken Broccoli Alfredo, Lemon Pepper Salmon
Side Dishes: Au Gratin Potatoes, Pizza Pull-Apart Bread
Soup and Stew Recipes: Hungarian Goulash, French Onion Soup
Dessert: Gluten-Free Zucchini Bread, Peach Cobbler

So delicious is the book that noted chef Rick Tramonto gushes: ““Perfect, easy-to-make recipes when you’re looking for something a little different to share with friends and family. Watching Addie’s star shine has been truly inspiring. She is definitely going to be an impactful leader in the next generation of chefs.”

Books, TV

Bread? Pasta? Potatoes? Bob Harper proves the “c” word is something easy to swallow

As a diabetic, I have to watch the “c” word. No, not that word (though I use it all the time), but “carbs”. Think pasta. Potatoes. Bread. Now, Bob Harper, host of The Biggest Loser and No. 1 bestselling author, has good news for us: We can all eat carbs again.  Sort of. As he writes in The Super Carb Diet: Shed Pounds, Build Strength, Eat Real Food  (St. Martin’s Press, $25.99), “Carbs don’t make you fat!”

After surviving a serious heart attack, Harper realized that he needed balance, both in his life and on his plate.  To balance his diet without gaining weight, he developed a program high in nutrients that would help maintain his weight and provide the energy he needed to recover.  That program grew into The Super Carb Diet.  

This is a balanced, scalable diet that will work for everyone, whether they’re trying to lose or maintain weight, and even for those super-athletes who want to build lean muscle. With effective workout routines that can be done at home, in the gym or while traveling, Harper has designed a program with enough variety to satisfy your hunger and motivate your body.

The Super Carb Diet: Shed Pounds, Build Strength, Eat Real Food by [Harper, Bob, Pellegrino, Danny]

With motivation and empathy balanced with tough love, he provides:

  • 2 weeks of sample menus featuring large and varied meals
  • Easy recipes for three full, everything-on-the-plate meals and a floater meal
  • A clear understanding of carbs (vegetables, whole grains, fruits) vs. “carbage” (potato chips, pretzels, white bread)
  • Tips for handling the urge to cheat—on vacations, during holidays, high stress times
  • Bob’s Signature Workouts
  • Sample food journals

In three months The Super Carb Diet will help anyone get lean, build strength, and enjoy foods that keep them happy and full.  Bob has combined his vast knowledge with hard-earned life experience to offer a road map to make us healthy and strong enough to handle anything that comes our way.

Books

Professional chef Cameron Stauch explores the clever ways that Vietnamese cooks transform imitation meats into exquisite, uniquely delicious dishes

We are happy to serve up some exciting news about a cookbook that W.W. Norton releases on March 13. This is no ordinary cookbook:  The dishes in Vegetarian Việt Nam ($35) make use of the full arsenal of Vietnamese herbs and sauces to make tofu, mushrooms, and vegetables burst with flavor like never before.

In the years he spent living and cooking in Vietnam, professional chef Cameron Stauch learned about a tradition of vegetarian Vietnamese cuisine that is light and full of flavor. He dishes out an essential introduction to meatless Vietnamese cooking; the nearly 100 recipes  have been  devised over centuries by Mahayana Buddhist monks.

Featuring practical and sophisticated recipes, Staunch explores the clever ways that Vietnamese cooks transform imitation meats into exquisite, uniquely delicious dishes such as Lemongrass Chile “Chicken” Strips Stir-Fry, Turmeric Tofu Wrapped in Wild Pepper Leaves, Sweetened Sticky Rice with Shredded Coconut, Green Mango Rice Paper Ribbons, and Soy Ginger Glazed Eggplant. Seconds anyone?

In these versatile and wide-ranging recipes, Staunch teaches the home cook how to use annatto seed oil, toasted rice powder, tamarind liquid, and nutty mushroom pâté, among other Vietnamese pantry essentials, to produce the spicy, tangy, crunchy and sweet dishes that will have readers wondering how they ever lived without vegetarian Vietnamese meals

Cameron cooks banh xeo pancakes for lunch.

With a lavishly illustrated glossary that helps you recognize the mushrooms, noodles, fruits, and vegetables that make up the vegetarian Vietnamese pantry, Vegetarian Việt Nam will unlock an entire universe of flavor to people who want healthy, tasty, and sustainable food.