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This post written by Clint Peppers: A Story of Hot Pursuits
by Amal Naj
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Amal Naj grew up in India, so you’d think he’d be okay with hot peppers. However, he really didn’t like spicy food until he was in college in Ireland and started to miss food from home. From there, he went on to be a hot pepper junkie. If you really love hot food, this is probably a book for you. Peppers: A Story of Hot Pursuits is a collection of pepper facts and stories.
This book covers a lot of pepper-related topics. It includes some of the history of peppers around the world and how they have been used as medicine. It also includes some science – Naj hangs out with a number of biologists who study peppers. Two chapters cover the rather bizarre story of McIlhenny Company, the people who make Tabasco sauce. Naj also describes some of his pepper-related travels, such as his visit to Hatch, New Mexico, which is probably the hot pepper capital of the United States, or the Andes mountains in Bolivia, where he joins in the search for the the original wild pepper.
This book came out in 1993, so some of the facts, especially where people talk about the science of peppers and how they are used in medicine, are probably outdated. There is no mention of the Naga Jolokia (the ghost pepper), either. Habaneros are as hot as this book gets. I also noticed that this is not the easiest book to read, although it’s not that bad. The author sometimes uses larger words when shorter ones would work just fine, and sometimes the science sections get bogged down by long lists of names. As long as you know to expect it, you should be fine.
Also, if you want to read more about Tabasco sauce, you might want to check out this series of articles from 2004.
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Where to Find It
[linkplus name=”Peppers” url=”http://csul.iii.com/record=b12113516~S0″]
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This post written by Clint Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm
by David Mas Masumoto
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David Masumoto’s family farm, near Fresno in the Central Valley of Northern California, is in trouble. His peaches taste really good, but he can’t sell them to big business because his peaches can’t be kept in refrigerators at major supermarkets for weeks and weeks. New kinds of peaches don’t taste as good, but they do last a lot longer, and that’s what corporations want. However, David decides to give his old-fashioned peaches one more year, and if he can’t sell them, he’ll tear them down and put in new, less-tasty peaches.
Running a family farm isn’t easy, even if people are interested in buying your products. The Masumoto farm grows peaches and raises grapes. Insects, drought, or disease can kill his trees and vines or destroy the fruit before the harvest. Even worse, sine the family dries the grapes in the sun to make raisins, any rain after the grapes are harvested will cause the grapes to mold. That’s right, rain at the wrong time will actually hurt the farm. How fair is that?
The Masumoto farm is an organic farm – they don’t use chemical fertilizer or insecticides. They try to work with nature rather than against it. Unfortunately, David is kind of new to this. His father farmed in the 50s and 60s, when people thought that chemicals were the ultimate answer to everything. Like some farmers, David has noticed that this isn’t true, but since he didn’t grow up doing things the organic way, he has to learn for himself.
Epitaph for a Peach is made up of a bunch of short pieces that represent his thoughts and experiences for that year. In some of these pieces, he tells us about his struggle to run a family farm and find a market for delicious peaches that nobody wants to buy. In others, we learn about the story of his parents and grandparents, what it was like to grow up on a farm, what living on a farm is like now, or glimpses of what it’s like to be Japanese-American. He is often very serious or philosophical, but other times he is funny.
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Where to Find It
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This post written by Clint The Book of the Spider
by Paul Hillyard
[cover name=thebookofthespider]
I realize that not everybody likes spiders. I understand. I don’t panic around them, but I really don’t want to hang out with them, either. However, unless spiders really freak you out, you might want to give this book a try.
The Book of the Spider covers a wide range of spider-related topics. It is not a textbook or a field guide; it’s pretty fun, casual, and sometimes funny. It starts with a chapter on arachnophobia and then moves to spiders in folklore, myth, and literature. There are chapters on particular categories of spiders, such as social spiders, spiders that fly (with silk), and aquatic spiders. Hillyard also discusses spider silk, the history of the study of spiders, and various other topics.
This is not a book designed to scare anyone. The author genuinely loves spiders, so he would much rather convince you enjoy (or at least respect) spiders than shock or horrify you. This is meant to be a fun book, and I think it works well. I still panic when I walk into a spiderweb, but as long as I’m eat least two or three feet from any spider, I do appreciate them.
Also, I have to mention one specific fact I learned. Back in the 1920s, people didn’t know whether black widow spiders were poisonous. William J. Baerg, who was teaching at the very same college I would later attend, was challenged to prove that their poison could affect a human. Baerg’s plane went something like this:
- Get a spider to bite him.
- Describe the really awful pain he suffered over the next few days.
- Get his notes published.
- Let anyone who wanted to argue with him do the same thing.
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This post written by Clint The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Survival and Obsession Among America’s Great White Sharks
by Susan Casey
[cover name=thedevilsteeth]
If you sail about 27 miles west of San Francisco, you’ll reach the Farallon Islands. They are home to hundreds of thousands of birds and quite a few sea lions, and every year around September, the great white sharks show up. Nobody knows why great white sharks – the same ones every year – spend a few months in the Farallones. Of course, there’s a lot we don’t know about great white sharks. However, Peter Pyle and Scot Anderson are working to change that. They have been working in the Farallon Islands for the last ten years. They know all the sharks by name.
Susan Casey, the author, spent eight weeks with Peter and Scot. The Devil’s Teeth is about her experience there. We get to know Peter and Scott, as well as Cal Ripfin, T-Nose, Spotty, Mama, Betty, or the Cadilac (a few of the local sharks). We also get to see what life is like on these desolate islands just off the coast of San Francisco.
You can read some of it online at Google Books.
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Where to Find It
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