Morris Ernst, second from left, defending Flaubert’s November against obscenity charges in a New York City courtroom, 1935. Copyright: Harry Ransom Center, UT-Austin I hope everyone had a nice 4th, and that any people or pets living within fifty miles of a city are healing from the inevitable shell shock. I especially enjoyed this drone video showing LA's insane amateur pyrotechnics displays, which is more or less what I witnessed in DC. I was already in a celebratory mood he

Photo © Irwin Wong I am delighted to announce the sale of Rice, Water, Earth, by Nancy Matsumoto and Michael Tremblay, to Terri Jadick at Tuttle Publishing. Rice, Water, Earth is a rice-paddy-to-glass journey through one year of sake brewing in Japan. It opens with the authors planting sake-grade rice in a muddy field in Yokawa, Hyogo Prefecture, and closes in an izakaya (traditional Japanese pub) with the authors tasting sake brewed from the very rice they helped plant. In b

I am pleased to announce the sale of Salt Wars, by Michael Jacobson, to Matthew Browne at MIT Press. For nearly four decades, the federal government’s “Dietary Guidelines for Americans”—the country’s basic nutrition policy—has urged people to consume less salt. But sodium consumption has hardly budged and tens of thousands of people die prematurely every year as a result. Salt Wars describes how for decades the food industry, a handful of industry-friendly researchers, and at

I'm pleased to announce that Feeding Your Family the Anti-Inflammatory Way has been sold to Jackie Musser at Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Chronic inflammation is the common thread linking diabetes, asthma, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis, depression, cancers, and a host of other conditions. While we think of most of these as adult diseases, they are occurring much more frequently in children and adolescents

Congratulations to Sheela Prakash, whose debut cookbook Mediterranean Every Day sold to Thom O'Hearn at Harvard Common Press! Sheela is a food writer and recipe developer who has been on staff at Epicurious and Food52. Currently she is an editor at Kitchn, the largest independently owned food media site. Sheela is also a registered dietitian and certified wine educator who holds master's degrees from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy and New York University's De

Congratulations to Larissa Zimberoff, whose debut book Technically Food just sold to Garrett McGrath at Abrams Press! Larissa is a freelance journalist who covers the intersection of food, technology, business, and sustainability for publications like the New York Times, Bloomberg, and Wired. This book will be an extension of her excellent reporting on topics like vegan eggs, lab-grown dairy, and algae protein. Technically Food investigates the technology paradigm shift under

I am extremely pleased to announce the sale of James Beard Award-winning author Catherine Donnelly's next book, tentatively titled The Raw-Milk Cheese Manifesto, to Chelsea Green Publishing. Cathy, who teaches at the University of Vermont, will be joining an industry leading, food- and sustainability-focused publisher based in White River Junction, VT. I may have to visit the Chelsea Green office when the book publishes in 2019, right around my 10-year Middlebury College reun

I am pleased and more than a little proud to announce that Sinsheimer Literary has sold Marion Nestle's next book, Buying Nutrition Science: How Food Industry Sponsorship Skews Research and Harms Public Health (working title), to the good folks at Basic Books. Marion has been writing on conflicts of interest in the food industry since her groundbreaking book Food Politics, and this will be another important book on a serious and pervasive issue. Just recently a JAMA paper rev