Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food
By Andrew F. Smith

Eating junk food and fast food is a great all-American passion. American kids and grownups love their candy bars, Big Macs and supersized fries, Doritos, Twinkies, and Good Humor ice cream bars. The disastrous health effects from the enormous appetite for these processed fat- and sugar-loaded foods are well publicized now. This was particularly dramatically evidenced by Super Size Me (2004), filmmaker Morgan Spurlock's 30-day all-McDonald's diet in which his liver suffered the same poisoning as if he had been on an extended alcohol binge. Through increased globalization, American popular food culture is being increasingly emulated elsewhere in the world, such as China, with the potential for similar disastrous consequences. This A-to-Z reference is the first to focus on the junk food and fast food phenomena from a multitude of angles in addition to health and diet concerns. More than 250 essay entries objectively explore the scope of the topics to illuminate the American way through products, corporations and entrepreneurs, social history, popular culture, organizations, issues, politics, commercialism and consumerism, and much more.

You grew up with the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm as childhood favorites—almost all of us did. But do you know Thomas Crane and his collection of Italian Popular Tales?

Crane was the first folklorist to bring the rich tradition of Italian tales to the English-speaking world. His collection captivated the public with its fresh voice and unfamiliar narratives. Meticulously gathered throughout the diverse regions of Italy, Crane’s translations provided a new look into Italian life and culture.

Featuring 583 essays that vary in length from 500 to 2,000 words and have been written by critics, professors of popular culture, and experts on various genres of current music, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Popular Musicians since 1990 is a companion to the six-volume Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: Centennial Edition (2000). While the Centennial Edition focused on classical music, there is extensive coverage in the new set of contemporary rock, pop, country, hip-hop and R & B. Popular musicians from other genres are also treated, among them Danny Elfman, the Chieftains, Yo-Yo Ma, Wynton Marsalis, and Stephen Sondheim.
The writing style is refreshing in its accessibility to a broad range of readers.

Among popular non-fiction titles for adults adapted for younger audiences, this picture book based on Truss' 2004 best-seller about punctuation may be a surprise, considering most kids' indifference to the topic. Yet it proves very effective, thanks to entertaining repackaging that narrows the original's broad purview to the comma, and focuses on cartoonist Timmons' interpretations of humorous comma-related goofs akin to the one referenced by the title (the punchline of an old joke about a panda, here set in a library rather than a bar). While dissolving into giggles over the change in meaning between "Eat here, and get gas," or "Eat here and get gas" (likely to be the most popular of the 14 sentence pairs given), children will find themselves gaining an instinctive understanding of the "traffic signals of language," even without the concluding spread explaining the whys and wherefores.