From a Yale News online review:
One way to understand American cuisine is through its regions — and the regional traditions that underlie the history of American cuisine. New England, the South, and New Orleans Creole are the regional cuisines of America. Examples of New England cuisine are “Yankee Pot Roast,” the lobster roll, and clam chowder. Southern favorites include grits, collard greens, okra, fried tomatoes, and sweet potato pie. Louisiana’s signature creole dishes are jambalaya, gumbo, and étouffée.
The compensation for that standardization — or at least what the food companies and the food and restaurant industry have offered — is variety. In my opinion, variety is what the food companies offer you in lieu of quality. At least in certain aspects, quality is impossible in an industrial food system.
In his new book, “American Cuisine: And How It Got This Way,” Yale historian Paul Freedman gives readers a window into understanding American history through cuisine spanning more than 200 years, debunking the myth that American cuisine does not, in fact, exist.
Freedman, the Chester D. Tripp Professor of History, approaches his study of American cuisine not by identifying a list of specific national or regional dishes, but rather by looking at the interactions among regionalism, standardization, and variety.
To read more: https://news.yale.edu/2019/10/15/yale-historian-pens-book-defining-what-exactly-american-cuisine
The first book on magazine sensation Holiday, which between 1946 and 1977 was one of the most exciting publications in the world. Renowned for its bold layouts, literary credibility, and ambitious choice of photographers and artists, Holiday portrayed the romance of travel like no other periodical.
Brian Kalt, an expert on US constitutional law and the presidency, talks to Jonathan Kay about the 25th Amendment and whether it can be used to remove a president. Professor Kalt recently published a book called 
I became engrossed in Mitchell’s drawings while browsing the book—they’re vivid, intimate—but her handwritten lyrics and poems are just as revelatory. It’s hard not to think about art-making of any kind as an alchemical process, in which feelings and experiences go in and something else comes out. Whatever happens in between is mysterious, if not sublime: suddenly, an ordinary sensation is made beautiful. Our most profound writers do this work with ease, or at least appear to. Mitchell’s lyrics are never overworked or self-conscious, and she manages to be precise in her descriptions while remaining ambiguous about what’s right and what’s wrong; in her songs, the cures and the diseases are sometimes indistinguishable. 
Joni Mitchell, in the foreword to “
Not until July 16 did Edison feel that he had a device worth patenting. The application he signed that day specified multiple timpani that “reproduced” vocal inflections and a sibilant-sensitive diaphragm. But a laboratory visitor (spying for Bell) found the instrument more powerful than clear, with the word schism sounding more like kim.
A Booklover’s Guide to New York, by Cleo Le-Tan, with drawings by Pierre Le-Tan (Rizzoli)
“Agent Running in the Field” is narrated by Nat, a 47-year-old spy for British intelligence—known not as “the Circus” of yore but, more prosaically, as “the Office”.
Whereas most Wright biographies build from one structure to the next, this one caroms from one digression to the next. Mr. Hendrickson spins miniature biographies of the people who commissioned Wright to build their homes and office buildings. An array of midcentury figures appears: e.g., Glenway Wescott, the novelist and poet who rubbed shoulders with Gertrude Stein in Paris and whose sister commissioned one of Wright’s homes; and Clarence Darrow, the renowned lawyer, who waded into the murk of Wright’s personal life when a disgruntled housekeeper attempted to use the Mann Act to have Wright arrested. We also meet the little-known residents of various structures. Seth Peterson, for instance, dreamed of living in a Wright home so powerfully that he camped out in the one he commissioned as it was being built. 
I describe myself as an urban-based painter who is interested in green spaces. Painting and drawing have been seen as profoundly unfashionable for most of my working life, and I have felt sometimes that it was quite eccentric to be a figurative painter with conventional subject matter. Looking back, my insistence on maintaining my practice as a figurative painter now seems more radical than conventional.
I was very blessed to have the opportunity to catch up with Hogan ahead of her Mayfair exhibition. I find myself entranced by her vibrant paintings that are dense with detail, filling the canvas from edge to edge with layers upon layers of paint. She has also established portraiture practice, her commissions including HRH The Prince of Wales. In a unique style, Hogan paints her sitters whilst they are deep in conversation, capturing unguarded gestures and expressions to create intricate portraits of both honesty and intimacy.
The single most astounding thing I found was that if you took all your DNA and formed it into a single fine strand, it would stretch to Pluto. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a fact that blew me away more than that — that there’s enough of me or you or anyone else to stretch to Pluto. There’s 10 billion miles of DNA inside you. That just seems unbelievable. The surprise is not that there’s so much to understand about the body but that we understand as much as we do.
Boomers Daily 