Elevate Difference

Books

Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans

For those unfamiliar with 1983’s I, Rigoberta Menchu, or the controversy that surrounded the initial publication of David Stoll’s contentious academic countering in 1998, it would be best to revisit the debates that have raged for the last ten years.

Chocolate

Chocolate by Paule Cuvetier is a two-volume set that comes in the matching case. The set includes The History of Chocolate and The Taste of Chocolate.

Marie Claire (May 2008)

I’m a magazine junkie. There’s nothing better than coming home to find your favorite magazine in the mailbox. I love thumbing through the ads and fashion spreads knowing full well that I will never be able to afford most of the clothes, but trying to glean some sense of what the latest themes are and how they will trickle down into my utilitarian wardrobe.

The Time it Takes to Fall

Margaret Lazarus Dean uses an American tragedy, the space shuttle Challenger explosion, as the backdrop of her charming coming-of-age novel, The Time It Takes to Fall. The heroine of the story is Dolores Gray, who is just entering the 7th grade.

Pure Dessert: True Flavors, Inspiring Ingredients, and Simple Recipes

Tart is no longer a four letter word, thanks to bakery chef extraordinaire (and three-time cookbook award winner) Alice Medrich. The most amazing thing about her sublime dessert concoctions is that she has whipped up her pastries using fresh, organic ingredients combined in stunningly elegant and inventive ways.

The Flower Farmer: An Organic Grower's Guide to Raising and Selling Cut Flowers

As far as dream jobs go, being an organic flower farmer ranks right up there with travel writer, cake baker, and rock star. As Lynn Byczynski thoroughly explains in The Flower Farmer, growing organic flowers for profit is a completely reasonable and realistic career choice that anyone can accomplish. Byczynski, who has been growing flowers commercially for 20 years, takes the reader step-by-step through the beginner stages of flower farming.

The Bad Wife Handbook

If in these modern times women had to hide potentially influential books from their husbands and others around them, The Bad Wife Handbook would be included among the silent list traded through some secret alley passage.

Lonely Planet Southeast Asia: On A Shoestring

Published just two months before the cyclone disaster in Myanmar (Burma), questions of safety regarding whether or not to go to the politically and ethically wrought country are best answered on the Lonely Planet website.

No Control

While Shannon K. Butcher is definitely a good writer, if you’ve read one “Romantic Suspense” novel, you’ve read them all. This genre inspires books that are all basically the same (predictable) except the characters’ names and settings are different. In this particular book, No Control, a woman named Lana Hancock is captured by a terrorist group only to be freed by a large man named Caleb Stone, an army guy who had infiltrated the terrorists’ ranks.

Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help

From Freud’s creation of psychoanalysis for curing psychopathology by means of talk therapy, to spilling one’s guts on Oprah’s couch or skyping into her soul series webcast, we all just really want to know (dammit!): who am I and why am I here? Saving the Modern Soul examines the language and practice of psychology, essentially, from an American cultural perspective.

My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy

Andrea Askowitz doesn’t mince words, and this book’s title is just the start. In My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy, Askowitz takes her readers on a blow-by-blow tour through her first trimester, back to her “before pregnancy” days, and then all the way through her second and third trimester, her delivery, and her postpartum period.

Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War

A book about women's involvement in war that shows, in part, their commitment to nonviolence? It may seem contradictory, but it's just one of the fascinating aspects of this well-researched book, Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War. Jensen presents case studies ranging from female physicians and aid workers to women in combat, delving into their relationships with the state and the dynamics of violence.

Will to Live: AIDS Therapies and the Politics of Survival

Ethnographers, novelists, and prisoners write heart-wrenching books because they present simple truths. Will to Live is a powerful, at points searing ethnography of HIV antibody surveillance systems in Brazil and pharmaceutical industry influence in bringing forth new relations of politics and health care.

Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe

Let me start out by saying that I am not a fan of non-fiction books. Seriously, the only things I read that can be categorized as historical are also categorized under romance. I expected this book to be like the ones I had to read for history classes in college: boring and never ending. It wasn’t an experience I was looking forward to. So imagine my surprise when I started reading and found that not only was the book interesting, it was so compelling that I literally could not put it down. I loved this book.

Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa

As a mom who does what I can to buy organic food for my family, I completely understand the general distaste most of us have for genetically modified (GM) foods. The very thought of vegetables altered by scientists in labs seems creepy and somehow inherently wrong, doesn’t it?

The Delivery Man

The Delivery Man is the story of Chase, a twenty-something guy living in Las Vegas. The book switches between Chase’s present day life and flashbacks from his tragic Las Vegas childhood.

If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation

Janine Latus’ bestselling memoir, If I Am Missing or Dead, is remarkable in many ways.

A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids

Margot Datz’s A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids is a wonderfully colorful picture book for adults - the kind of book that should come with matching postcards, a calendar, and refrigerator magnets. Datz is both writer and illustrator, and she does a delightful job with both. The focus of the book is how women can experience life to the fullest by living like mermaids.

I Hate This Part of Texas #7/Keep Loving Keep Fighting #7

Though you may not know from reading it I Hate This Part of Texas #7/Keep Loving Keep Fighting #7 is a split zine.

Magic and the Power of the Goddess: Initiation, Worship, and Ritual in the Western Mystery Tradition

The planet is in turmoil and, according to Magic and the Power of the Goddess by Gareth Knight, we can heal it by connecting with the Goddess - the feminine energy that runs though our world.

Bitch (Issue #39: Wired)

Having never read an issue of Bitch, I found myself apprehensive when beginning my read of "The Wired Issue." The word "bitch" conjures a menagerie of intimidating persons to mind, and my expectation was that the content would be something similar. While I encountered a few impassioned articles and editorials, the majority of the issue's content was exploratory, explanatory, and thought provoking. The magazine describes itself as the "feminist response to pop culture," and its content covers a range of topics including technology, the media, music, and film.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

It's rare that I find myself so drawn in by a book that it puts a smile on my face. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles did that and more. At its most basic, this book is about Chinese food in the United States - where it came from, its evolution, and the influence it has had on American dining.

When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided By Race

It would be hard to find a story more inherently dramatic than that of Sandra Laing, one that can show in a more complete and complex manner the ramifications of South Africa’s apartheid regime. With coloring distinctly different from that of her white family, Sandra Laing was expelled from her white school in 1965 and reclassified as “coloured” (of mixed-race descent), then, after her family engaged in legal battle, was made ‘white” once again; in the throes of this conflict, at the age of fifteen, Laing fell in love and ran away with a black man, with whom she had several children.

Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics

Nineteenth century New England was a virtual breeding ground for progressive ideas. During the period, a host of feminist philosophers, jurists, and scholars emerged onto American society. Among the heroines associated with the era, you’ve probably examined those such as Dorthea Dix and Margaret Fuller in your high school U.S. History class. Many women, however, still remain relatively unacknowledged, despite their critical roles in scholarly debates of the era.

The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture

Lauren Berlant is the George M. Pullman Professor of English and Chair of the Lesbian and Gay Studies Project at the University of Chicago. She is the author of several books, including The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, and The Anatomy of National Fantasy.

Beyond the Icarus Factor: Releasing the Free Spirit of Boys

It seems that every year for the last fifteen or so, children of one gender or another are considered neglected, voiceless, constrained by social mores. In neither case is the notion wrong, but rarely are all the social implications put together.

Five Lessons I Didn't Learn From Breast Cancer (And One Big One I Did)

I’ve never had to battle cancer, but I’ve had many family members - including my mother right now - diagnosed with other forms of cancer. It’s difficult to find a light side to cancer when you’re fighting for your life. Shelley Lewis, however, writes about her experience with humor and advice for a world that has marketed breast cancer. One thing that sets Lewis’ book apart is that she makes a point to say that breast cancer didn’t change her or give her a profound realization about her life; she’s the same person she was before the cancer.

Pearls, Politics, and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead

With the 2008 election, we saw the first woman candidate who could win, but why did it take this long? Too few women have run for office in both the state and federal level. Madeleine M.

Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy: On Being an American Citizen

In this piece, Susan Griffin develops quite a substantial work by elaborating on tenants and beliefs behind "democracy" as a practice; she establishes a readable interpretation of democracy as it stands in today's world.

Awesome

“If the garbage man doesn’t come for a couple weeks, we all die of cholera.” If you are unfamiliar with Jack Pendarvis, there is really nothing I can say that would adequately prepare you for a foray into his debut novel, Awesome, except perhaps that the “best” modern humor seems to come at you in throngs of grotesque hyperbole.
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