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A clever use of 3rd person personal and first person accounts ground the story of picture brides from Japan sent to America to marry Japanese farmworkers. Otsuka covers an extensive breadth of time, territory, and emotion as she tells the story of the collective brides and their individual hardships in a book not much bigger than a novella. The accounts are historically correct and the book can be read as an account of Japanese women in pre-world war II America. Osuka's book can also be read as a unique, creative, attempt to tell the stories from a history we have all but forgotten.

A thorough and comprehensive look at U.S. food policy and how it effects family farms in the U.S. and abroad. Uncovers the tangled allegiances of food policy players in government and the private sector and offers a history of governmental food policies from Roosevelt to Obama. Wenonah Hauter has done her homework and presents a concise criticism of the politics involved in deciding what food we put on the table. The reader will think twice about purchasing processed foods and making choices involving organic vs. unorganic purchases. Hauter's arguments are so solid as to be irreproachable. It is a solid winner among a slew of books regarding food culture and politics in America.

A dense, academic, text, "Gender Trouble" questions the binary concept of genders in modern western society. Butler wants to create a gender theory that includes the performance and experience of gays, lesbians, and trans-gendered people. In this context, she questions feminism's embrace of an "essential" feminine and recognizes how the concept of an "essential" feminine can be used against woman and the feminist movement. She questions the essentialism of icons such as Simon De Beauvoir, who proudly proclaimed, "Woman is not born, she is made." Butler turns the prevailing binary gender hegemony on its head and finds a place for non-heterosexual performances of gender in society. A serious feminist and challenger of social norms and those responsible for perpetuating those norms.

An atlas indeed! Any depressive will find themselves in the pages of this book. Particularly relevant for depressives who have tried to self-medicate with illicit drugs. Solomon’s memoir is honest and sensitive and shows how depression is an ongoing battle throughout one’s life.

A shockingly honest and sometimes humorous account of one man’s anxiety. Smith meets his anxiety head-on as he considers the causes, continuation, and the farce that ensues. At once poignant and light-hearted, Smith’s memoir will make the reader cringe with embarrassment and laugh-out-loud at the absurdity of anxiety’s hold on the mind and body.