Book Reviews

The author of the beloved book “An Everlasting Meal” talks about her new companion cookbook geared toward making biscuits with sour milk...

This book review ran in the Washington Post on Feb. 11th, 2022.  In the early 1970s, American botanist Jack Harlan proclaimed that mass...

Since college, I've been a devoted Ani Difranco fan. If a CD were as delicate as a record, I would've worn away the grooves on Out of...

This book review was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on Jan. 25th. Lentil Underground author Liz Carlisle A series of books...

This book review was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sept. 10th. “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are,”...

In “ Salt Sugar Fat, " investigative reporter Michael Moss shows how executives and food scientists at Coca-Cola, Kraft, Frito-Lay and...

I'm in the "power issue!" Well, at least my article is. In the March issue of Vogue , I investigate the claims that Dr. William Davis makes in his best-selling book Wheat Belly . Is wheat really a "perfect chronic poison?" Does whole wheat bread spike your blood sugar more than table sugar? And why does it seem that everyone has either celiac disease or gluten intolerance?  Davis's patients shed pounds—and improve their health—on his radical wheat-free diet. But should this c

Inextricably bound up with M.F.K. Fisher’s lifelong passion for food was the pleasure she took from sipping and serving a simple house wine, a crisp aperitif or a prickly, delicious glass of Champagne. In “M.F.K. Fisher: Musings on Wine and other Libations” (Sterling Epicure; $19), Fisher’s biographer, Anne Zimmerman, gathers all of the eminent food writer’s essays on drink under one beautifully designed cover. Some of these gems have been plucked from well-known collections,

Economist Tyler Cowen calls himself an “everyday foodie,” and his new book, “An Economist Gets Lunch,” is aimed at people like him. So...

Tracie McMillan grew up on Tuna Helper and Ortega Taco Dinners and was raised to believe that farm-fresh, home-cooked food was for...

After Novella Carpenter’s critically acclaimed memoir Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer came out, she and friend Willow...

Reading Benjamin Skinner's book A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery was a sober experience, yet I couldn't put it...

O.K., I'm being saucy.  But, it's truly amazing that the same man who wrote The Double Helix (and co-discovered the structure of DNA)...

A few months ago, I went to a New York Public Library panel where the writer Jan Morris spoke about her life and travels. During the Q&A...

New Yorker staff writer Rebecca Mead just wrote a searing exposé about the wedding industry— One Perfect Day: The Selling of the...

A scientific look inside the female mind - Reviewed by Hannah Wallace Sunday, August 20, 2006 ©2006 San Francisco Chronicle The Female...

Read my L.A. Times review of Nina Planck's important book, Real Food: What to Eat and Why