Book Business' The Best We Read 2012

Jesse McDougall, Columnist

The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World, by Sandor Katz (Chelsea Green, 2012)

Sandor Katz is a likable and charming guy with devious plans to subvert the corporate American food system with an army of food fermenters and an arsenal of the most delicious pickles you've ever tasted. His latest book, The Art of Fermentation, is the definitive work on food preservation. It is not solely a book of recipes (though it is jam-packed with 'em)—it is a thoughtful examination of how fermentation works, why it is a healthier and more natural way to preserve food, and what role it has played in human society and evolution. It is a marvelous book full of valuable—and beautifully presented—insights and experience from one of today's food masters. I keep it on my bed stand.

Michael Weinstein, Blogger

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert Caro (Knopf, 2012)

The timeline of Caro's bio has reached the point of Johnson's completely divergent impulses—Vietnam and Civil Rights. Caro brilliantly shows how one person can contain complete opposites. The writing is (as always) stunning and exciting. Since I lived through some of this, it was even more compelling.

Frank Romano, Columnist

Reporting the Revolutionary War: Before It Was History, It Was News, by Todd Andrlik (Sourcebooks, 2012)

With Patriot and Loyalist eyewitness accounts from newspapers printed on both sides of the Atlantic, readers experience the American Revolution as it happened with the same immediacy and uncertainty of the colonists.

This book reproduces newspaper articles from contemporary reports and then discusses the historical implications. News was often second hand and inaccurate, but it is one of the primary sources for our understanding of how the Revolution unfolded.