Edible Estates or Champagne

Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, A Project by Fritz Haeg

Author: Fritz Haeg

The Edible Estates project proposes the replacement of the domestic front lawn with a highly productive edible landscape. It was initiated by architect and artist Fritz Haeg on Independence Day, 2005, with the planting of the first regional prototype garden in the geographic center of the United States, Salina, Kansas. Since then three more prototype gardens have been created, in Lakewood, California; Maplewood, New Jersey and London, England. Edible Estates regional prototype gardens will ultimately be established in nine cities across the United States.
Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn documents the first four gardens with personal accounts written by the owners, garden plans and photographs illustrating the creation of the gardens--from ripping up the grass to harvesting a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs. Essays by Haeg, landscape architect Diana Balmori, garden and food writer Rosalind Creasy, author Michael Pollan and artist and writer Lesley Stern set the Edible Estates project in the context of larger issues concerning the environment, global food production and the imperative to generate a sense of community in our urban and suburban neighborhoods. This smart, affordable and well-designed book also includes reports and photographs from the owners of other edible front yards around the country, as well as helpful resources to guide you in making your own Edible Estate.

Interesting textbook: Applied Econometrics or International Economic Law

Champagne: How the World's Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed over War and Hard Times

Author: Don Kladstrup

Throughout history, waves of invaders have coveted the northeast corner of France: Attila the Hun in the fifth century, the English in the Hundred Years War, the Prussians in the nineteenth century. Yet this region – which historians say has suffered more battles and wars than any other place on earth – is also the birthplace of one thing the entire world equates with good times, friendship and celebration: champagne.

Champagne is the story of the world's favourite wine. It tells how a sparkling beverage that became the toast of society during the Belle Epoque emerged after World War I as a global icon of fine taste and good living. The book celebrates the gutsy, larger–than–life characters whose proud determination nurtured and preserved the land and its grapes throughout centuries of conflict.

Kirkus Reviews

Champagne is champagne because it comes from Champagne. But there's much more to it than that, as the wine-loving Kladstrups (Wine & War, 2001) document in this sometimes fizzy portrait of the bubbly. Faux naivete may be at play when, by way of opening, the Kladstrups let drop the hint that they were shocked to learn that the Great War was horrific; that certainly isn't news to the people of France's much-fought-over Champagne region. That four-year conflict proves central to the authors' account of how bubbly survived the odds to become a drink known around the world-and to become an ever-rarer commodity in parts of it, as when Cristal went from selling 600,000 bottles a year at the beginning of WWI in St. Petersburg alone, "exclusively for the czar," to selling nothing in Russia after the Revolution, nearly bankrupting the house of Roederer. Closer to home, the war threatened to destroy some of France's most productive vineyards, which previous wars had destroyed many times over since the days of the Roman conquest and Attila. The Kladstrup's travelogue, real and metaphorical, through the Champagne region-battles over which were waged by French bureaucrats and boosters, too, as to just what the region comprised and who was entitled to use its "controlled denomination"-gets a little almanac-like at times, lending a sort of everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about feel to the enterprise. Still, there's good history to be found here, and plenty of treasures in that surfeit of facts and trivia; the authors' account of a drunken German retreat at the beginning of WWI is a standout, as is their minibiography of the since-appropriated Dom Perignon, who didn't really invent champagne-"itinvented itself"-but still deserves glory for his work in raising the global quality of life with his exquisite blends of potent grape juice. Not the definitive history of champagne, but a pleasing contribution, to be read over a mimosa or a magnum.