Annie Bloom's Books

For generations of migrant workers, from Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl of the 1930s to Mexican laborers today, the beautiful and harsh landscape of southeastern California's Imperial County has held the promise of paradise -- and the reality of hell. In Imperial, William T. Vollmann takes us deep into the heart of this haunted region and, by extension, into the dark soul of American imperialism.

In Threshold, Thom Hartmann looks at the deteriorating state of our planet, where the dynamics of environmental, economic, and population change are boiling over the limits within which society can function. Hartmann busts the myths and ideologies of religious fundamentalism, capitalism run amok, male domination, and militarism that are engendering the suffering of millions for the benefit of the few.

In the epic biography The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, Douglas Brinkley examines the life and achievements of our "naturalist president." Theodore Roosevelt made conservation a universal endeavor. As we face the problems of global warming, overpopulation, and sustainable land management, Teddy Roosevelt's stout resolution to protect our environment is an inspiration and a contemporary call to arms for us all.

With The Food of a Younger Land, Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America: Before the national highway system brought the country closer together; before chain restaurants imposed uniformity and low quality; and before the Frigidaire meant frozen food in mass quantities, the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional. It helped form the distinct character, attitudes, and customs of those who ate it.

I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti tells the story of Giulia Melucci's fizzled romances and the mouth-watering recipes she used to seduce her men, smooth over the lumps, and console herself when the relationships flamed out. She suffers each disappointment with resolute cheer and a bowl of pastina (recipe included) and has lived to tell the tale so that other women may find greater success, and, if that's not possible, at least have something good to eat.

Danny Evans had a smokin' hot wife, a new baby boy, and the highest paying job he'd ever had. Then, a sudden layoff and the events of 9/11 plunged Evans into a crushing depression. At turns poignant and uproarious, Rage Against the Meshugenah vividly traces Evans's journey through the minefield of mental illness from a modern man's point of view, including his no-holds-barred confrontations with infuriating sexual side effects, self-medication with beer and porn, and a therapist named Neil Diamond.

Amelia Earhart captured the hearts of the nation after becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1928. Her disappearance on an around-the-world flight in 1937 is an enduring mystery. Based on ten years of research, Susan Butler's East to the Dawn provides a richly textured portrait of Earhart in all her complexity. Read this book before the Hilary Swank biopic, Amelia, hits the big screen in October.

In Julia Child, award-winning food writer Laura Shapiro tells the story of Child's unlikely career path, from California party girl to cool-headed chief clerk in a World War II spy station to bewildered amateur cook and finally to the Cordon Bleu in Paris. A food lover who was quintessentially American, right down to her little-known recipe for classic tuna fish casserole, Shapiro's biography personifies Child's own most famous lesson: that learning how to cook means learning how to live.

Biologist and journalist Carol Kaesuk Yoon takes us beyond genus and species to deep cognition, revealing our drive to name life. Naming Nature, sure to delight readers who love words and nature, is a rich journey of naming from Linnaeus, whose system turned classification from a hobby to a science, and Darwin, who ended the idea of rigid species definitions, to today's dream of naming all of earth's species and listing them online.

What do "Fight Club," wallpaper patterns, George Balanchine's "Serenade," and Italian superstitions have in common? They're all included in the entry for the number 17 in Derrick Niederman's Number Freak. This guided tour of the numbers 1 to 300 covers everything from basic mathematical principles to ancient unsolved theorems, from sublime theory to delightfully arcane trivia.

Greg Craven's What's the Worst That Could Happen? gives readers concerned about global warming a way to decide on the best course of action, by asking them to consider, "What's the worst that could happen?" And for those who decide that action is needed, Craven provides a solution that is not only powerful but also happens to be stunningly easy. This intriguing and provocative guide is the first to help readers make sense of the contradictory statements about global climate change.

Zack Lynch's The Neuro Revolution illuminates an insider's glimpse into the startling future now arriving at our doorstep. Neurotechnology -- new tools for both understanding and influencing our brains -- is now being applied to almost every aspect of human endeavor, from financial markets to law enforcement to politics to advertising and marketing, artistic expression, warfare, and even to religious belief.

Edited by Jeff Sharlet (author of The Family), Believer, Beware presents true tales of sex ed in Catholic school, witches in Kansas, sects and the city, Buddhists in the barbershop, Sufis under your nose, an adolescent Jewish messiah in Queens, and more. In a world riven by absolute convictions, these ambivalent confessions, skeptical testimonies, and personal revelations speak to the subtler and stranger dilemmas of faith and doubt--of religion lost and found and lost again.

In The Reason for God, Timothy Keller addresses the frequent doubts that skeptics and non-believers bring to religion. Using literature, philosophy, anthropology, pop culture, and intellectual reasoning, Keller explains how the belief in a Christian God is, in fact, a sound and rational one. He provides both a solid platform against skepticism and a challenging argument for pursuing the reason for God.

Journalist Alison Wright's Learning to Breathe is a spiritual memoir about the will to survive ... one breath at a time. Following a car crash in the mountains of Laos, Wright spent fourteen hours meditating while waiting for medical care, concentrating on every breath as if it would be her last. After recovering from countless surgeries, she summitted Mount Kilimanjaro on her 40th birthday, determined to never again take a single breath for granted.

You have within you unlimited capacities for love, for joy, for communion with life, and for unshakable freedom -- and here is how to awaken them. In The Wise Heart, Jack Kornfield offers the most accessible and illuminating guide to Buddhism's transformational psychology ever published in the West. This book offers an extraordinary journey from the roots of consciousness to the highest expression of human possibility.