WYPR Arts

What We're Reading, March 22-28

Published March 22, 2011 at 9:00 AM EDT

Sarah Vowell takes on the American occupation of Hawaii (with varying degrees of success) in her latest quirky historical adventure; author Katharine Greider dives into centuries of New York history through the lens of her crumbling Manhattan row house; and Lisa Abend, a journalist working in Spain, follows the young apprentices toiling away in the molecular gastronomy labs of Ferran Adria's elBulli, often considered the best restaurant in the world.

Unfamiliar Fishes

by Sarah Vowell

America's pre-eminent historical tourist (and a regular contributor to public radio's This American Life) now voyages to Hawaii to tell the story of how Americans first came to the islands and then, eventually, stole them, in a coup d'etat against the Hawaiian royalty led by American planters and merchants in 1893. As with her last book, The Wordy Shipmates, her primary fascination is with the New England Puritans, represented in this case by the missionaries who voyaged to the savage Sandwich Islands to proselytize and civilize. Her signature breezy, charming, talkative style, and her love for arcane texts found deep in archives, makes this the only history of Hawaiian colonization likely to make the New York Times best-seller list.

Hardcover, 256 pages; Riverhead; list price, $25.95; publication date, March 22

The Sorcerer's Apprentices

A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adria's elBulli

By Lisa Abend

If you are a vigorous follower of all things foodie, you've probably heard about elBulli. The Spanish restaurant has been voted the best in the world many times over. Its chef/owner, Ferran Adria, creates magical dishes borne of science that play with a diner's expectations of taste, temperature and texture. Journalist Lisa Abend's book, The Sorcerer's Apprentices takes readers into Adria's kitchen, where experienced cooks come from around the world to spend a season in the presence of greatness, working without pay. Abend draws a portrait of a disciplined and exacting place, free from the chaotic, abusive excesses made famous by Anthony Bourdain, yet intense in its own right.

Hardcover, 304 pages; Free Press; list price, $26; publication date, March 22

The Archaeology of Home

An Epic Set on a Thousand Square Feet of the Lower East Side

By Katharine Greider

Writer Katharine Greider and her husband had lived on the top floor of 239 E. 7th St. for five years when she received a call from an architect the couple had hired to recommend a "schedule of repairs for the dilapidated row house we called home." The architect informed her that instead of making repairs he would only make one strong suggestion — to move out, and fast. The foundations of the building were crumbling to dust, rotting out from underneath the beams. Soon, the building would need to be sealed by the city for code violations. Suddenly, Greider, her husband and their young children had to find a new place to live while fighting with the city, their neighbors and the past tenants of the house who left the building in such a precarious state. Greider launches a full-on investigation into the history of her small plot of land, tracing it back to Manhattan's Native American roots and the first Dutch settlers. She then tells the story of the house — and along with it, an abbreviated version of the story of New York itself — through the shipbuilding era, the tenement squalor, to the gritty Lower East Side of the 1970s. The neighborhood was a true melting pot over the years, playing host to Eastern European and Puerto Rican immigrants, Italians and Irish alike. In tracing back the history of 239, Greider is able to peel away chronological layers of city life, exploring the idea that in such a dense location, a house is more than just a house — it is a story, a small history of what it has meant to be "at home" over time.