Making Craft Cider: A Ciderist’s Guide by Simon McKie is an excellent starting point when learning to make your own cider. This is a short and well-written book that does a good job of summarising the best of the other four books in this series of reviews. McKie covers all the important topics—including choosing apples, [...]
Real Cidermaking on a Small Scale by Michael Pooley and John Lomax is a good introductory book on cider making. It is short with lots of photographs. One feature I like that is not in the other cider books is a pair of flowcharts on the steps for making either naturally conditioned sparkling cider or [...]
Andrew Lea’s Craft Cider Making is the best book I have read on producing your own cider from fresh apple juice. It is an excellent introduction to making traditional ciders. As a food biochemist who spent 13 years in cider related research, the author is probably the most qualified author in this series. This background [...]
The first book I read on cider was Ben Watson’s Cider, hard and sweet. This book is an excellent starting point for Americans only familiar with the pasteurised and preserved “cider” found in grocery stores in the fall. It provides a good introduction to the styles of cider produced around the world and includes the [...]
Two years ago, I became interested in the classic American drink: cider. This interest was partially due to Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire, and later Daniel Okrent’s Last Call. I happen to live in Fort Wayne, the final resting place of John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) the great lower-Midwestern spreader of cider apples and the [...]
It is no longer a luxury to make our economy low-carbon and sustainable. It’s a matter of preventing harm to the species who dwell on the Earth, including our own. Just as an ailing patient can recover, so can an ailing planet. But we must act now. [page 5] Changing Planet, Changing Health by Paul [...]
The Merchants’ War is the much later (thirty-one years!) sequel to The Space Merchants. It continues the story after the settlement of Venus has become established. The novel revolves around the continuing conflict between the Advertising Agency controlled earth and the Anti-Huckster Venus. The Merchants’ War is a pretty good continuation of The Space Merchants, [...]
The Space Merchants is a very good short novel (158 pages) presenting an early 1950s view of what the world would look like in the near future if it became dominated by advertising agencies. The book is written from the perspective of the marketing executive who is in charge of promoting the soon to be [...]
I saw this book on the featured shelf at the local library and it looked interesting. I only read this book quickly, so here is a nano-review: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Renewable Energy for Your Home is a very basic intro to the different categories of home energy production and conservation for people who [...]
I just read Reading the Landscape of America by May Theilgaard Watts. It is an excellent popular introduction to understanding what you see as you walk and drive around the USA. Reading the Landscape of America contains good descriptions of succession and development in various communities, extending back to the last ice age. This helps [...]