Join us at our next narrative nonfiction book club meeting on Saturday, July 12th at 4pm in the Hermann Room.  We will be discussing Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves by Nicola Twilley.  Author Nicola Twilley will be joining us via Zoom for the first portion of our book club! To register to attend, CLICK HERE.

Synopsis:  “How often do we open the fridge or peer into the freezer with the expectation that we’ll find something fresh and ready to eat?  It’s an everyday act-but just a century ago, eating food that had been refrigerated was cause for both fear and excitement.  The introduction of artificial refrigeration overturned millennia of dietary history, launching a new chapter in human nutrition.  We could now overcome not just rot but seasonality and geography.  Tomatoes in January?  Avocados in Shanghai?  All possible.

In Frostbite, Nicola Twilley takes readers on a tour of the cold chain from farm to fridge, visiting off-the beaten-path landmarks such as Missouri’s subterranean cheese caves, the banana-ripening rooms of New York City, and the vast refrigerated tanks that store the nation’s orange juice reserves.  Today, nearly three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, shipped, stored, and sold under refrigeration.  It’s impossible to make sense of our food system without understanding the all-but-invisible network of thermal control that underpins it.  Twilley’s eye-opening book is the first to reveal the transformative impact refrigeration has had on our health and our guts; our farms, tables, kitchens, and cities; global economics and politics; and even our environment.

In the developed world, we’ve reaped the benefits of refrigeration for more than a century, but the costs are catching up with us.  We’ve eroded our connection to our food and redefined what fresh means.  More important, refrigerator is one of the leading contributors to climate change.  As the developing world races to build a US-style cold chain, Twilley asks: Can we reduce our dependence on refrigeration?  Should we?  A deeply researched and reported, original, and entertaining dive into the most important invention in the history of food and drink, Frostbite makes the case for a recalibration of our relationship with the fridge-and how our future might depend on it.”

About the author:  “Nicola Twilley is the author of Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves (2024), and co-host of the award-winning Gastropd podcast, which looks at food through the lens of history and science, and which is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with Eater.  Her first book, Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine, was co-authored with Geoff Manaugh and was named one of the best books of 2021 by Time Magazine, NPR, the Guardian, and the Financial Times.  She is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and the author of Edible Geography.

Our next narrative nonfiction book club pick is the 2024 Pulitzer Prize Finalist The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight by Andrew Leland.  Come pick up a copy of the book at the adult services desk, register to attend, and then join us at our book club meeting on Saturday, June 7th at 11am in the Hermann room to share your thoughts!  To register now, CLICK HERE!

Synopsis:  “We meet Andrew Leland as he’s suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be blind: he’s midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from sightedness to blindness over years, even decades.  He grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from outside in.  Soon – but without knowing exactly when – he will likely have no vision left.

Full of apprehension but also dogged curiosity, Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of being that awaits him: not only the physical experience of blindness but also its language, politics, and customs.  He negotiates his changing relationships with his wife and son, and with his own sense of self, as he moves from his mainstream, “typical” life to one with a disability.

Part memoir, part historical and cultural investigation, The Country of the Blind represents Leland’s determination not to merely survive this transition but to grow from it – to seek out and revel in that which makes blindness enlightening.  Brimming with warmth and humor, it is an exhilarating tour of a new way of being.”