Friends Book Sale Library Fundraiser | May 15–20

Member Preview Sale (5/15, 5–8PM) • Book Sale (5/16-5/19) • Take Away Day (5/20, 11am–12pm). See full details.

List

Category
Audience

My Life in Recipes

Joan Nathan

A new cookbook from the best-selling and award-winning author that uses recipes to look back at her life and family history—and at her personal journey discovering Jewish cuisine from around the world

"There is no greater authority on Jewish cooking than Joan Nathan." —Michael Solomonov, James Beard award-winning chef and author of Zahav


Before hummus was available in every grocery store—before shakshuka was a dish on every brunch menu—Joan Nathan taught home cooks how and why they should make these now-beloved staples themselves. Here, in her most personal book yet, the beloved authority on global Jewish cuisine uses recipes to look back at her own family’s history— their arrival in America from Germany; her childhood in postwar New York and Rhode Island; her years in Paris, New York, Israel, and Washington, DC. Nathan shares her story—of marriage, motherhood, and a career as a food writer; of a life well-lived and centered around meals—and she punctuates it with all the foods she has come to love.

With over 100 recipes from roast chicken to rugelach, from matzoh ball soup to challah and brisket, here are updated versions of her favorites. But here too are new favorites: Salmon with Preserved Lemon and Za’atar; Fragrant Spiced Chicken with Rice, Eggplant, Peppers, and Zucchini; Mahammar (a Syrian pepper, pomegranate and walnut dip); Moroccan Chicken with Almonds, Cinnamon and Couscous; Joan’s version of the perfect Black and White Cookies.

This is a treasury of recipes and stories—and an invitation to a seat at Nathan's table.

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Shabbat

Adeena Sussman

Instant New York Times bestseller
Named a Best Cookbook for Fall 2023 by Food & Wine, Eater, and Simply Recipes

The author of Sababa returns with a collection of good-for-the-soul recipes that embody the spirit and pleasures of Shabbat


As a child, Adeena Sussman looked forward to the magic of Shabbat—the traditional Jewish day of rest—all week. A treasured time when family and friends come together to relax, unwind, and revel in one another’s company during open-ended, tantalizing meals, Shabbat has been practiced all over the world and throughout history. In Sussman’s home, then and now, the Shabbat table is a centering force, a nourishing place where one and all are welcome. It’s an opportunity every week to feed the soul.
Because tradition dictates that the Sabbath is reserved for downtime, Shabbat cooking is all about smart techniques and sound prep. Nostalgic, cozy mains like Fig & Pomegranate Brisket and Bubbe’s Extra-Crispy Potato Kugel are crowd-pleasers and require little hands-on attention. Sides and bright salads like Moroccan Carrot Salad, Roasted Kohlrabi, Cherry & Feta Salad, and Sweet & Tart Eggplant Salad are best served at room temperature. With staples like Amba (pickled mango spread), Tomato Jam, and Schug-a-churri (a blend of Yemenite and South American condiments) on hand, it’s easy to punch up flavor and find something delectable to slather on challah. And from the showstopping Lemon Black-Sesame Bundt Cake to the rich comfort of Vegan Rice Pudding, there’s always something special for dessert.
Woven throughout the recipes is a rich portrait of Shabbat in Israel, where it is practically a national holiday. Taking us inside the kitchens and traditions of local cooks who have shared their most beloved recipes, Shabbat brings to life Sussman’s adopted home country with transporting, slice-of-life storytelling. Deeply personal and brimming with life, Shabbat inspires us all to embrace the delights of Shabbat. Now more than ever, Shabbat cooking is what we all need.

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52 Shabbats

Faith Kramer

AS SEEN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

PubWest Book Design Awards - Silver Winner in Cookbooks

“Gorgeous” —The Washington Post

Whether you are a longtime host of weekly Shabbat dinners or new to this global Jewish tradition, 52 Shabbats will spice up your Friday night in one way or another. This book offers a holistic scope of the Shabbat tradition for every reader, Jewish or otherwise. In it you’ll find:

 

  • Over fifty primary recipes to anchor your menu
  • More than twenty recipes for side dishes, accompaniments, and desserts
  • Short essays that detail global foodways and histories
  • Explanation of the Shabbat ritual


Faith Kramer outlines recipe pairings in a mix-and-match friendly format, incorporating easy substitutes throughout the cookbook to make Shabbat accessible for all lifestyles. From gefilte fish to challah, berbere lentils to cardamom cheesecakes, these seasonally organized recipes will never fail to inspire your weekly dinner menu.

MORE PRAISE FOR 52 SHABBATS:

"Imaginative"Los Angeles Times

“For anyone who appreciates world flavors, history, and great techniques….A worthy companion to Joan Nathan’s King Solomon’s Table (2017).” —Booklist

Educational and tantalizing” —Foreword Reviews

"[Faith Kramer's] inventive dishes are...packed with flavor." —Dianne Jacob, author of Will Write for Food

Clear and approachable....Faith has included recipes that not only have you rethinking Shabbat but dinner year-round.” —Calvin Crosby, The King’s English Bookshop

 

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Kissing Kosher

Jean Meltzer

"An unflinchingly honest romance." --Kirkus, starred review



From the author of THE MATZAH BALL and MR. PERFECT ON PAPER comes this hilarious and emotional rivals-to-lovers romance.



Step 1: Get the secret recipe. Step 2: Don't fall in love...



Avital Cohen isn't wearing underpants--woefully, for unsexy reasons. Chronic pelvic pain has forced her to sideline her photography dreams and her love life. It's all she can do to manage her family's kosher bakery, Best Babka in Brooklyn, without collapsing.



She needs hired help.



And distractingly handsome Ethan Lippmann seems the perfect fit.



Except Ethan isn't there to work--he's undercover, at the behest of his ironfisted grandfather. Though Lippmann's is a household name when it comes to mass-produced kosher baked goods, they don't have the charm of Avital's bakery. Or her grandfather's world-famous pumpkin spice babka recipe.



As they bake side by side, Ethan soon finds himself more interested in Avital than in stealing family secrets, especially as he helps her find the chronic pain relief--and pleasure--she's been missing.



But perfecting the recipe for romance calls for leaving out the lies...even if coming clean means risking everything.
 

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Modern Jewish Cooking

Leah Koenig

From a leading voice of the new generation of young Jewish cooks who are reworking the food of their forebears, this take on the cuisine of the diaspora pays homage to tradition while reflecting the values of the modern-day food movement. Author Leah Koenig shares 175 recipes showcasing handmade, seasonal, vegetable-forward dishes. Classics of Jewish culinary culture—such as latkes, matzoh balls, challah, and hamantaschen—are updated with smart techniques and vibrant spices. Approachable recipes for everything from soups to sweets go beyond the traditional, incorporating regional influences from North Africa to Central Europe. Featuring holiday menus and rich photography, this collection is at once a guide to establishing traditions and a celebration of the way we eat now.

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Michael Chabon

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic, beloved novel of two boy geniuses dreaming up superheroes in New York’s Golden Age of comics—soon to be a Showtime limited series

“It's absolutely gosh-wow, super-colossal—smart, funny, and a continual pleasure to read.”—The Washington Post Book World

Named one of the 10 Best Books of the Decade by Entertainment Weekly • Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize

A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus” (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939.
 
A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink.
 
Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age.
 
Winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award and the New York Society Library Book Award

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My Friend Anne Frank

Hannah Pick-Goslar

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER



"Both heartbreaking and life-affirming" (Edith Eger, author of The Choice), the long-awaited memoir of Holocaust survivor Hannah Pick-Goslar, who shares an intimate look into her life and friendship with Anne Frank.



In 1933, Hannah Pick-Goslar and her family fled Nazi Germany to live in Amsterdam, where she struck up a close friendship with her next-door neighbor, an outspoken and fun-loving young girl named Anne Frank. For several years, the inseparable pair enjoyed a carefree childhood of games, sleepovers, and treats with the other children in their neighborhood of Rivierenbuurt. But in 1942, Hannah and Anne's lives abruptly changed forever. As the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam progressed, Anne and the Frank family seemingly vanished, leaving behind unmade beds and dishes in the sink--but no trace of Anne's precious diary. Torn from her dear friend without warning, Hannah spent the next two years tormented by questions about Anne's fate, wondering if she had, by some miracle, managed to escape danger.



In this long‑awaited memoir, Hannah shares the story of her childhood during the Holocaust, from the introduction of anti-Jewish laws in Amsterdam to the gradual disappearance of classmates and, eventually, the Frank family, to Hannah and her family's imprisonment in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. As Hannah chronicles the experiences of her own life during and after the war, she provides a searing look at what countless children endured at the hands of the Nazi regime, as well as an intimate, never‑before‑seen portrait of the most recognizable victim of the Holocaust. Culminating in an astonishing fateful reunion, My Friend Anne Frank is the profoundly moving story of childhood and friendship during one of the darkest periods in the world's history.

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Unstoppable

Joshua M. Greene

Winner – Best of Los Angeles Award's "Best Holocaust Book - 2021"

“A must-read that hopefully will be adapted for the screen. Greene lets Wilzig’s effervescent spirit shine through, and his story will appeal to a wide variety of readers.” - Library Journal

Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story and an epic David-and-Goliath adventure. While American teens were socializing in ice cream parlors, Siggi was suffering beatings by Nazi hoodlums for being a Jew and was soon deported along with his family to the darkest place the world has ever known: Auschwitz. Siggi used his wits to stay alive, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from camp Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis, a service that earned him a visa to America. On arrival, he made three vows: to never go hungry again, to support the Jewish people, and to speak out against injustice. He earned his first dollar shoveling snow after a fierce blizzard. His next job was laboring in toxic sweatshops. From these humble beginnings, he became President, Chairman and CEO of a New York Stock Exchange-listed oil company and grew a full-service commercial bank to more than $4 billion in assets.

Siggi’s ascent from the darkest of yesterdays to the brightest of tomorrows holds sway over the imagination in this riveting narrative of grit, cunning, luck, and the determination to live life to the fullest.

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Antisemitism

Deborah E. Lipstadt

***2019 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER—Jew­ish Edu­ca­tion and Iden­ti­ty Award***

The award-winning author of The Eichmann Trial and Denial: Holocaust History on Trial gives us a penetrating and provocative analysis of the hate that will not die, focusing on its current, virulent incarnations on both the political right and left: from white supremacist demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, to mainstream enablers of antisemitism such as Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn, to a gay pride march in Chicago that expelled a group of women for carrying a Star of David banner.


Over the last decade there has been a noticeable uptick in antisemitic rhetoric and incidents by left-wing groups targeting Jewish students and Jewish organizations on American college campuses. And the reemergence of the white nationalist movement in America, complete with Nazi slogans and imagery, has been reminiscent of the horrific fascist displays of the 1930s. Throughout Europe, Jews have been attacked by terrorists, and some have been murdered.

Where is all this hatred coming from? Is there any significant difference between left-wing and right-wing antisemitism? What role has the anti-Zionist movement played? And what can be done to combat the latest manifestations of an ancient hatred? In a series of letters to an imagined college student and imagined colleague, both of whom are perplexed by this resurgence, acclaimed historian Deborah Lipstadt gives us her own superbly reasoned, brilliantly argued, and certain to be controversial responses to these troubling questions.

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My Own Words

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The New York Times bestselling book from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—“a comprehensive look inside her brilliantly analytical, entertainingly wry mind, revealing the fascinating life of one of our generation's most influential voices in both law and public opinion” (Harper’s Bazaar).

My Own Words “showcases Ruth Ginsburg’s astonishing intellectual range” (The New Republic). In this collection Justice Ginsburg discusses gender equality, the workings of the Supreme Court, being Jewish, law and lawyers in opera, and the value of looking beyond US shores when interpreting the US Constitution. Throughout her life Justice Ginsburg has been (and continues to be) a prolific writer and public speaker. This book’s sampling is selected by Justice Ginsburg and her authorized biographers Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams, who introduce each chapter and provide biographical context and quotes gleaned from hundreds of interviews they have conducted.

Witty, engaging, serious, and playful, My Own Words is a fascinating glimpse into the life of one of America’s most influential women and “a tonic to the current national discourse” (The Washington Post).

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