Short Takes: Plenty of Shotgun Blasts

The September issue of Food and Wine features "Revelatory Caramel Cake" from the SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE COMMUNITY COOKBOOK.

Natasha Trethewey (BEYOND KATRINA) featured on the New Yorker's Book Bench blog. For Trethewey junkies, there's a great interview recently posted on Southern Spaces as part of their Poets in Place project.

Environmental History calls AN EVERGLADES PROVIDENCE, Jack Davis's book on Marjory Stoneman Douglas, a "significant biography of an amazing and influential woman . . . highly recommended reading for every environmental, Florida, literary and gender historian."

"Despite the complicated science involved in tick eradication the work is accessible and timely, especially considering the issues surrounding the proper extent of federal power. The narrative, with plenty of shotgun blasts and dynamite explosions alongside helpful maps, makes this work an engaging and worthwhile read": Southwestern Historical Quarterly on MAKING CATFISH BAIT OUT OF GOVERNMENT BOYS.

Warming up for new Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award winners, out next month: Minnesota Reads on the "powerful descriptive writing" in THE DANCE BOOTS and Caroline Leavitt on the "knockout" collection PLEASE COME BACK TO ME.

CORNBREAD NATION 5 (alongside books by Thomas Keller and Anthony Bourdain)in the food issue of the Atlantan (page 24-25).

Law and History Review on FATHERS OF CONSCIENCE: "...the inheritance rights of enslaved women and children have received little sustained attention. This neglect is remedied by this fine work."