The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy by Sasha Issenberg Sushi and the Global Economy A review by Bina Venkataraman Stories of how food makes it to your dinner table tend to be less than appetizing in this age of free trade and free-range chicken. From Fast Food Nation to The Omnivore's Dilemma, learning about what we eat titillates the mind more often than the tongue. If this can be called a trend, Sasha Issenberg's The Sushi Economy is a notable exception: During the 2-1/2 weeks I spent reading it, I ate sushi six times. Issenberg traces the rising tsunami that is the sushi trade from tuna fisheries where prize bluefin are caught, to sushi stalls on the Tokyo streets to high-fashion American restaurants. To him sushi is an exceptional manifestation of today's global economy: cross-cultural, unbranded, and with a link to the environment so fresh that it quivers. But even more distinctive, he notes, is the engine that drives this booming economy: personal tastes instead of corporate plans. "In the sushi economy, power does not flow downward from the boardrooms of multinational corporations... Read the entire review More reviews from Christian Science Monitor

Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron, the intrepid, erudite author of numerous travel books, has once again undertaken an odyssey of Homeric proportions. This time he's ventured over 5,000 miles across the entire length and breadth of the Silk Road, through some of the most dangerous territory on the planet -- Xian in...

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Why are we always so fascinated by other people's marriages? "We flip through magazine articles about celebrity breakups at the dentist's office, or carefully deconstruct the tension between a couple at a dinner party," notes author and cultural commentator Katie Roiphe. What are we looking...

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When Russian detective Arkady Renko first appeared in Gorky Park it was 1981. Ronald Reagan was busy writing his "evil empire" speech, the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer was the most anticipated event of the year, and most of us still needed a quarter if we wanted to make a phone...

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On April 6, 1994, Yehia Ayyash, one of the more elusive members of the Islamic Resistance Movement known by its Arab acronym Hamas, left an indelible mark on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The man whom former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin called "the Engineer" dispatched a Palestinian...

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Those familiar with Jacqueline Woodson's work know that she doesn't shy away from hard-hitting themes for the middle grade set. In her earlier work Locomotion, for example, Woodson tackled grief, trauma, death, survival, and hope -- all in the brief span of 112 pages. Oh yeah, make that 112 pages...

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Most Americans have some memory of the 444 days the world waited to see if Iranian revolutionaries would release 52 American hostages seized at the American Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. The bitter feelings from that event are just now beginning to lessen: It was only last month...

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The New Deal. The Hundred Days. The WPA. Social Security. Lend-Lease. Nothing to fear but fear itself. Freedom from fear. Freedom from want. The shorthand for modern America begins with the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only man in the nation's history elected to four terms in office....

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Remember those writing assignments where a teacher challenged you to depict boredom without being boring? Well, acclaimed author Don DeLillo, in his eagerly anticipated novel about Sept. 11, has not only captured the fraught numbness that followed the World Trade Center attacks -- he has written a...

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There may be nothing more elusive in publishing than a genuine word-of-mouth phenomenon. Set the book someplace where English isn't the first language, make your main character a coward, and throw in so much suffering that even Oprah might cry "Enough!" and, well, there's pretty much only one...

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Is America the product of the earnest, reverent, family-values-oriented Pilgrims of 1620 or the adventurers, castoffs, and profiteers of Jamestown, Va., who set foot in the New World 13 years before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock? The Pilgrims have amassed the bulk of history's notice and ...

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