Bring fresh meaning to your houseplants, bouquets, and floral arrangements with this illustrated exploration of the rituals, cultures, and mythology behind 600 blooms, herbs, and trees.
FLOWERS AND THEIR MEANING:
The Secret Language and History of 600 Blooms
by Karen Azoulay
Clarkson Potter, February 2023
In the Victorian language of flowers, hundreds of blooms were ascribed specific meanings based on mythology, science, foreign language, and ancient history. Page through this botanical encyclopedia to learn each flower’s Victorian meaning (blackberry, for example, represents « envy » while ranunculus boldly states, « I am dazzled by your charms »), other common names for the bloom, and read about each flower’s cultural history. There is also an index of the flowers grouped by theme, should you want to challenge your local florist with creating a coded message for a loved one.
Karen Azoulay pairs vintage botanical drawings with electric photography, creating a one-of-a-kind flower dictionary with a distinctly mystic feel. FLOWERS AND THEIR MEANINGS is both a beautiful volume and a practical guide to incorporating the language of flowers into your own life.
Karen Azoulay is an interdisciplinary artist and author whose performance and sculptural art explores earth-elements and the female form. Her projects have been featured and reviewed in publications such as the New York Times, New Yorker, Hyperallergic, and Vogue. Recent exhibitions include Semi-Precious, a solo show at Essex Flowers in New York, and Root of the Head at Simone DeSousa Gallery in Detroit.
The descendant of farmers and barbecuing masters, Dr. Howard Conyers is a structural dynamicist at NASA by day and a preserver of barbecue history after hours. In THE UNTOLD STORY OF UNITED STATES’ BARBECUE, Dr. Conyers details the real and complete history of barbecue in America, tracing its roots back to the enslaved people who are believed to have brought the practice to the American South to today’s Black experts all across the country. Dr. Conyers shares oral histories and photographs from Black whole-animal barbecue cooks from across the South and describes the traditional methods of roasting hogs and other animals over pits in the ground—a practice that dates back well over 400 years. The history of Black barbecue has never before been fully documented by someone born into the craft, who has uncovered and pieced together the fascinating first-person narratives that finally tell the complete cultural story.
In a world with an endless hunger for innovation, why is it so hard to create audacious change? According to thought leader Seth Goldenberg, the answer to this question stems from how we, as a society, view questions themselves.
Dr. Alex Jadad is the creator of the Jadad scale, which has become the world’s most widely used methodology to assess the quality of clinical trials, and Tamen Jadad-Garcia is a health entrepreneur and philosopher. Here they combine their expertise to uncover the medical system’s unstable foundations, which condemn you to be ill. The Jadads begin this exploration with a simple question: “What is health?” 
From human rights activist Michael Shaikh, this will be a sweeping survey on how food and food culture are invisible casualties of war and political violence. From Syria to Sri Lanka, Afghanistan to Bolivia, Shaikh examines how a community’s sense of history and identity is lost when food traditions are lost, and the people who are trying to restore and reclaim their heritage.