Chocolate: From Simple Cookies to Extravagant Showstoppers

Chocolate provides recipes for every intensity of chocolove and all levels of culinary skills. There are simple mix-bake-cut cakes, a mud-rich fudge sauce that hardens on ice cream, a collection of ice creams to go with it, and a killer Rich Chocolate Mousse.

Any comfortable cook, particularly one who's mastered the techniques in How to Bake, Great Italian Desserts, and Malgieri's other equally clear and precise works, can turn out Cream Puff Truffles, Chocolate Brownie Tart, a French Buche de Noel, and most of the other recipes in this dessert-lover's dream book.

Dedicated amateurs and professional cooks will appreciate Malgieri's explicit guidance for the process of tempering, which is necessary for making certain chocolate confections, and the recipes for European-style molded confections such as liqueur-filled cordials, and hand-dipped masterpieces, including Raspberry Tricolors. Less ambitious chocoholics might attempt the 26 kinds of truffles or play with Chocolate Plastic for making decorations. And no one should miss Chocolate's final chapter, the over-the-top "Showpieces and Decorating Projects."

This book is lavish with color photos. The chapter openings, shot with the artistry of Irving Penn still lifes, are so breathtaking you can taste them. --Dana Jacobi

Information on storage, handling, and the fundamentals needed to create chocolate confections is clear and concise. Recipe sections include everything you need to know to turn the food of the gods into desserts for us mortals: cakes and cookies, creams and custards, ice creams, pies and pastries, sauces and beverages, truffles and pralines, dipped and molded chocolates, all adapted for the home cook.

Illustrated with four-color photographs throughout, all 380 luscious recipes will send a shiver of delight down the spine of every chocolate lover. Chocolate is definitive without being intimidating; it is a true home companion for anyone who wants to cook with chocolate.

The first major analyses of Busby Berkeley's career on stage and screen. Showstoppers emphasizes his relationship to a colorful, somewhat disreputable tradition of American popular entertainment: that of P.T Barnum, minstrel shows, vaudeville, Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, burlesque, and the Ziegfeld Follies. Rubin shows how Berkeley absorbed the declining theatrical tradition during his years as a Broadway dance director and then transferred it to the new genre of the early movie musical. With lively prose and engaging photographs, Showstoppers explores new ways of looking at Busby Berkeley, at the musical genre, and at individual film.

Showstoppers is divided into three parts, the first of which describes Berkeley's inimitable style, the elements that distinguish his work from others, and it's roots. Part II looks at his Broadway theater career during the second half of the 1920s. The meat of the story is presented in Part III, comprising 3/4 of the book, which describes in 7 chapters his cinema career spanning from 1930 to 1962. Each of his films is examined and includes references to the photos which are presented in two groups.

Showstoppers contains 248 pages of text plus 62 pages of production still photos of Berkeley's numbers. Although the black and white photos are not enlargements of actual frames from the films, they depict real sets and actors and, in some cases, show production equipment not visible in the film such as camera tracks in one instance. They are professionally lit, well printed and the captions informative. I highly recommend this book to any Berkeley buff, film fan, or lover of the musical spectacle on film.

Big Band & Swing (Ultimate Showstoppers Series)

Average customer rating:

Fairly easy and tons of fun!

Big Band & Swing (Ultimate Showstoppers Series)
Warner Bros. Publications
Manufacturer: Alfred Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Songbooks | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0757993389

When it comes to the production and distribution of mass culture, no country in modern times has come close to rivaling the success of America. From blue jeans in central Europe to Elvis Presley's face on a Republic of Chad postage stamp, the reach of American mass culture extends into every corner of the globe. Most believe this is a twentieth-century phenomenon, but here Robert W. Rydell and Rob Kroes prove that its roots are far deeper.

Buffalo Bill in Bologna reveals that the process of globalizing American mass culture began as early as the mid-nineteenth century. In fact, by the end of World War I, the United States already boasted an advanced network of culture industries that served to promote American values. Rydell and Kroes narrate how the circuses, amusement parks, vaudeville, mail-order catalogs, dime novels, and movies developed after the Civil War—tools central to hastening the reconstruction of the country—actually doubled as agents of American cultural diplomacy abroad. As symbols of America's version of the "good life," cultural products became a primary means for people around the world, especially in Europe, to reimagine both America and themselves in the context of America's growing global sphere of influence. Paying special attention to the role of the world's fairs, the exporting of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show to Europe, the release of The Birth of a Nation, and Woodrow Wilson's creation of the Committee on Public Information, Rydell and Kroes offer an absorbing tour through America's cultural expansion at the turn of the century. Buffalo Bill in Bologna is thus a tour de force that recasts what has been popularly understood about this period of American and global history.