Category Archives: New York Times

May 29, 2009

“Why should it be absurd to suggest that the potato changed world history?” John Reader asks in “Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent.” If the claim seems odd to those for whom the tuber is little more than a mainstay of comfort foods, Reader argues that its low-key ubiquity is an indication of just how central the potato is to our lives.

Beginning with evidence of 12,500-year-old domesticated potatoes at an archaeological site in Chile, moving to the Inca Empire and on to Renaissance Europe, Reader shows how potatoes (which today are the world’s fourth-largest food crop) have tipped the balance of subsistence.

Read it on the NYT site…

March 1, 2009

FIRECRACKERS rained down like hail, filling the street with sulfurous billows. Young men, dressed in white, waved towels, trying to keep the explosives away from the black-faced god seated in the ornate sedan chair that some of them held aloft. There, in the center of it all, Phuket Town fell away; the formerly opulent Portuguese-Chinese mansions and rows of boxy concrete shops faded as the hot morning sun swooned before clouds of acrid smoke. (more…)

February 22, 2009

In a stylish space of cast concrete and rare woods, subdued accent lighting and elegant sightlines just off Market Street, glowing wine bottles are tended by black-clad staff. Small clusters of unpretentious wine lovers (some in pearls, some in sneakers) chat quietly. In this, Press Club summarizes the best of San Francisco’s wine scene.

Read it on the NYT site…