Name: Cat and Bird
Brand: Kyoko Mori
SKU: 9781953368690
Price: 19.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Kyoko Mori

Cat and Bird

9781953368690

$19.99

A “sweet, touching” memoir about animals, loss, and finding a home in the world by the author of Shizuko’s Daughter and Yarn (Kirkus Reviews).

Cat and Bird, a “memoir in animals,” is anchored around Kyoko Mori’s relationship with the six house cats who defined the major eras of her life as a writer: Dorian, Oscar, Ernest, Algernon, Miles, and Jackson. As she details the rhythms and routines of their days together, she weaves a narrative tapestry out of her past: the deep family tragedy and resilience that marked her childhood in Japan, her move to the American Midwest as a young adult, her experiences as a bird rehabilitator and cat trainer, her marriage and divorce, and the joys and profound heartbreaks that come with pet ownership. Full of razor-sharp observations and generous prose, Cat and Bird whirls into a moving meditation about grief, writing, the imagination, the solitary life, and the wonders of companionship with creatures both domestic and wild.

Cover image for Cat and Bird, isbn: 9781953368690

David Wilson

Great Lakes Tarot Deck

9781953368881

$38.00

From David Wilson, the artist behind the bestselling Rust Belt Arcana tarot deck.

Great Lakes Tarot includes 78 original illustrations. The cards feature plants, animals, water, industry, and people of the region. This deck is for tarot fans, of course, but it's also for anyone interested in the Great Lakes region, enormous reserves of freshwater, fishing, shipping, wildflowers, ecosystems, coastlines, the Midwest, the Rust Belt, and Canada.

Cover image for Great Lakes Tarot Deck, isbn: 9781953368881

Matt Stansberry

Rust Belt Arcana

9781948742122

$19.95

An insightful take on the Tarot through the lens of the industrial Midwest, and a beautiful piece of nature writing in its own right.

What can the Tarot tell us about the flora and fauna of the industrial Midwest? In what ways might this ancient practice connect us to the Rust Belt today? Rust Belt Arcana uses the Tarot’s time-tested structure to answer these questions, juxtaposing the characteristics of the cards with the creatures and plants that surround us every day. The twenty-two idiosyncratic essays here—one for every card in the Major Arcana—bridge biology, natural history, and the human condition. They tell stories of abundance and loss, and they remind us of the Rust Belt’s persistent remnant wilderness, a landscape often dismissed as unremarkable.

A magical book both for Tarot enthusiasts and for those who are seeking to see beauty in a beleaguered landscape and define their remarkable place within it.

“Original and insightful. A vivid exploration of the beauty and brokenness of life’s community. Stansberry’s writing reveals the many surprising ecological, psychological, and cultural connections among human and beyond-human lives.” —David George Haskell, Pulitzer finalist for The Forest Unseen

“A surprising, delightful book, filled with original insights about the rich diversity of nature in the Midwest. Highly recommended!” —Kenn Kaufman, author of Kingbird Highway

“The essays in Rust Belt Arcana are like meditations from a parallel world —a magical place of nature which persists against all odds alongside the cities and subdivisions and highway interchanges of the Great Lakes region.” —David Beach, GreenCityBlueLake Institute, Cleveland Museum of Natural History

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David Wilson

Rust Belt Arcana (Tarot Deck)

9781953368874

$38.00

"The Rust Belt Arcana tarot is incredible. I wholeheartedly recommend it for tarot enthusiasts, naturalists, and witches alike."—Allison Sasso, Veil and Vow Tarot

Our popular Rust Belt Arcana tarot deck is back in stock! The tarot deck contains 78 watercolor prints by David Wilson (co-author and illustrator of Matt Stansberry's Rust Belt Arcana: Tarot and Natural History in the Exurban Wild).

Cards are standard tarot size (2.75" x 4.75" / 300gs). We are confident this is the first ever Rust Belt themed tarot deck, and pretty sure it is the prettiest one as well. Now with a new printed box!

Cover image for Rust Belt Arcana (Tarot Deck), isbn: 9781953368874

Bonnie Tawse

The Belt Cookie Table Cookbook

9781948742832

$14.95

A compendium of traditional midwestern cookies “along with the poignant and heartwarming stories behind each recipe” (Mary Bilyeu, Toledo Blade).

The Belt Cookie Table Cookbook celebrates the tradition of the cookie table with forty-one classic recipes from authentic Mahoning Valley cookie tables and cooks. What’s a cookie table? Funny you should ask! The cookie table is a tradition beloved by residents of Youngstown, Pittsburgh, and parts in between. It has its roots in a time when wedding cakes were far too dear for newly arrived immigrants to purchase. Instead, family and friends showed their love for a bride and groom by baking from scratch hundreds (sometimes thousands) of cookies and other small sweet treats to be shared at the reception. The Belt Cookie Table Cookbook is an international baking guide, including cookies from different cultures, cookies with different textures, spices, shapes, and backstories. Simple cookies, ridiculously indulgent cookies, experimental cookies―they’re all here. And most of all it shares the tradition of the cookie table, a heartfelt way of building community that has endured through generations.

In the tradition of the community cookbook, The Belt Cookie Table Cookbook is a must for any kitchen large or small, and a great gift for bakers and home cooks.

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Zito Madu

The Minotaur at Calle Lanza

9781953368669

$19.95

A “hauntingly effective” surrealist travel memoir about the mysterious transformations that may lurk inside us all (Library Journal, starred review).

Venice, 2020. As a pandemic rages across the globe, Zito Madu finds himself in a nearly deserted city, its walls and basilicas humming with strange magic. As he wanders a haunted landscape, we see him twist further into his own past: his family’s difficult immigration from Nigeria to Detroit, his troubled relationship with his father, the sporadic joys of daily life and solitude, his experiences with migration, poverty, foreignness, racism, and his own rage and regret. But as it is with all labyrinths, after finding its center, will he come away unscathed, or will he transform into the gripping, fantastical monstrousness that’s out to consume him whole?

With nods to Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, this surrealist debut memoir takes us into the labyrinth of memory and the monsters lurking there.

Cover image for The Minotaur at Calle Lanza, isbn: 9781953368669

Sara Bir

The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook

9780998018898

$16.95

A cookbook and guide to enjoying “America’s best secret fruit”—a rare Midwestern delicacy with a “sunny, electric, and downright tropical” flavor (Serious Eats).

They are found in the fleeting, honeyed weeks between August and October. They are fleshy and awkward to eat, sweetly fragrant, and they do not travel well at all. They are beloved by foragers, keepers of regional food traditions, and anyone seeking relief from the industrial food chain.

In The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook, Sara Bir sets the humble pawpaw center stage, with detailed information on how to harvest, source, store, and―of course―cook with these uniquely Midwestern delicacies. Here you’ll find recipes for pawpaw cornbread and pawpaw pudding; key lime pawpaw cheesecake and banana-pawpaw ketchup. Sidebars address questions as varied as “Where can I buy frozen pawpaws?” and “How do I use pawpaw in a cocktail?” Written with humor and love for a curious subject, The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook will inspire you to experiment in the kitchen and get out into the woods.

“The best cookbooks convey not only how to use an ingredient but why an ingredient is special in the first place. The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook is just that sort of resource—great recipes that make me want to go foraging in order to cook them!” ―Abra Berens, chef and James Beard Award-nominated author of Pulp: A Practical Guide to Cooking with Fruit

Includes an introduction by Alexis Nikole Nelson, TikTok star and @blackforager

Cover image for The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook, isbn: 9780998018898

Elizabeth Catte

What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia

9780998904146

$18.95

An antidote to bigotry and a “perfect primer for readers seeking factual, realistic portrayals of the rural and working-class experience” (Los Angeles Times).

In 2016, headlines declared Appalachia ground zero for America’s “forgotten tribe” of white working-class voters. Journalists flocked to the region to extract sympathetic profiles of families devastated by poverty, abandoned by establishment politics, and eager to consume cheap campaign promises. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a frank assessment of America’s recent fascination with the people and problems of the region. The book analyzes trends in contemporary writing on Appalachia, presents a brief history of Appalachia with an eye toward unpacking stereotypes, and provides examples of writing, art, and policy created by Appalachians as opposed to for Appalachians—ultimately offering a much-needed insider’s perspective on the region.

“The most damning critique of Hillbilly Elegy.” —New York Review of Books

“Succeeds in providing a richer, more complex view.” —Publishers Weekly

“A necessary response to the bigotry against a much-maligned culture.” —Chris Offutt, award-winning author of Code of the Hills