New Orleans history is steeped in coffee. Café du Monde and Morning Call started serving café au lait more than a century ago.Outside the Cathedral of St. Louis in Jackson Square, early entrepreneurs like Old Rose provided eager churchgoers with the brew, and it was sold in the French Market beginning in the late 1700s. People gathered for business, socializing, politics and auctions at five hundred coffee exchanges and shops in the 1800s. Since 1978, myriad specia...

A firsthand account of evolving race relations in South Carolina during the Reconstruction eraBitter Freedom is an insightful evaluation of the pivotal role of the Freedmen's Bureau during Reconstruction in war-torn South Carolina as written by a young bureau agent eager to do his part in rebuilding a divided nation. In early 1866 Major William Stone of the 19th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers, having survived four major Civil War battles and thre...

New York Times bestsellerFrom the Winner of the James Beard Lifetime Achievement AwardNow a Netflix Original SeriesT****he grande dame of African American cookbooks and winner of the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award stakes her claim as a culinary historian with a narrative history of African American cuisine.Acclaimed cookbook author Jessica B. ...

In this major new history of the Civil War, Bruce Levine tells the riveting story of how that conflict upended the economic, political, and social life of the old South, utterly destroying the Confederacy and the society it represented and defended. Told through the words of the people who lived it, The Fall of the House of Dixie illuminates the way a war undertaken to preserve the status quo became a second American Revolution whose impact on the country was as strong and lasting...

Whether you live below the Mason Dixon Line or just wish you did, The Southerner’s Handbook is your essential guide to Southern living and the good life. Curated by the editors of the award-winning Garden & Gun magazine, this compilation of more than 100 instructional and narrative essays offers a comprehensive tutorial to modern-day life in the South.From Food and Drink to Sporting & Adventure; Home & Garden to Style, Arts & Culture, you'll discover essential ski...

“Highly informative and entertaining…propels the reader light years beyond dull textbooks and Gone with the Wind.”—San Francisco ChronicleIt has been 150 years since the opening salvo of America’s War Between the States. New York Times bestselling author Ken Davis tells us everything we never knew about our nation’s bloodiest conflict in Don’t Know Much About ® the Civil War—another fascinating and fun installment in his acclaimed series.In his signature engaging st...

**“The one food book you must read this year."*—Southern LivingOne of Christopher Kimball’s Six Favorite Books About Food*A people’s history that reveals how Southerners shaped American culinary identity and how race relations impacted Southern food culture over six revolutionary decades**Like great provincial dishes around the world, potlikker is a salvage food. During the antebellum era, slave owners ate the greens from the pot and set aside the leftover po...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe New York Times bestselling author of George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates turns to two other heroes of the nation: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.**In The President and the Freedom Fighter, Brian Kilmeade tells the little-known story of how two American heroes moved from strong disagreement to friendship, and in the process changed the entire course of ...

In this classic study, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson deftly narrates the experience of blacks--former slaves and soldiers, preachers, visionaries, doctors, intellectuals, and common people--during the Civil War. Drawing on contemporary journalism, speeches, books, and letters, he presents an eclectic chronicle of their fears and hopes as well as their essential contributions to their own freedom. Through the words of these extraordinary participants, both Northern and So...

The iconic restaurant chain that defined Americana by introducing twenty-eight flavors of ice cream, "tendersweet" clam strips, grilled "frankforts," and more.Popularly known as the "Father of the Franchise Industry," Howard Johnson delivered good food and fair prices—a winning combination that brought appreciative customers back for more. The attractive white Colonial Revival restaurants, with eye-catching porcelain tile roofs, illuminated cupolas, and sea blue sh...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award!A thrilling, page-turning piece of writing that describes the forces conspiring to tear apart the United States—with the disintegrating political processes and rising tempers finally erupting at Bull Run." . . . a major work by a major writer, a superb recreation of the twelve crucial months that opened the Civil War." —The New York Times

Food expert and celebrated food historian Andrew F. Smith recounts-in delicious detail-the creation of contemporary American cuisine. The diet of the modern American wasn't always as corporate, conglomerated, and corn-rich as it is today, and the style of American cooking, along with the ingredients that compose it, has never been fixed. With a cast of characters including bold inventors, savvy restaurateurs, ruthless advertisers, mad scientists, adventurous entrepreneurs, celebrity chefs,...