Books with author Ian A. Miller

An NAACP Image Award Finalist for Outstanding Literary Work—Non FictionJames Beard award–winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards, and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who played remarkable roles in unforgettable events in the nation's history. Daisy McAfee Bonner, for example, FDR's cook at his Warm Springs retreat, described the president's final day on earth in 1945, when he was struck down just as his lunchtime cheese souffle emerged from the oven. Sorrowfully, but with a cook's pride, she recalled, "He never ate that souffle, but it never fell until the minute he died." A treasury of information about cooking techniques and equipment, the book includes twenty recipes for which black chefs were celebrated. From Samuel Fraunces's "onions done in the Brazilian way" for George Washington to Zephyr Wright's popovers, beloved by LBJ's family, Miller highlights African Americans' contributions to our shared American foodways. Surveying the labor of enslaved people during the antebellum period and the gradual opening of employment after Emancipation, Miller highlights how food-related work slowly became professionalized and the important part African Americans played in that process. His chronicle of the daily table in the White House proclaims a fascinating new American story.

2014 James Beard Foundation Book Award, Reference and ScholarshipHonor Book for Nonfiction, Black Caucus of the American Library AssociationIn this insightful and eclectic history, Adrian Miller delves into the influences, ingredients, and innovations that make up the soul food tradition. Focusing each chapter on the culinary and social history of one dish--such as fried chicken, chitlins, yams, greens, and "red drinks--Miller uncovers how it got on the soul food plate and what it means for African American culture and identity.Miller argues that the story is more complex and surprising than commonly thought. Four centuries in the making, and fusing European, Native American, and West African cuisines, soul food--in all its fried, pork-infused, and sugary glory--is but one aspect of African American culinary heritage. Miller discusses how soul food has become incorporated into American culture and explores its connections to identity politics, bad health raps, and healthier alternatives. This refreshing look at one of America's most celebrated, mythologized, and maligned cuisines is enriched by spirited sidebars, photographs, and twenty-two recipes.

2014 James Beard Foundation Book Award, Reference and ScholarshipHonor Book for Nonfiction, Black Caucus of the American Library AssociationIn this insightful and eclectic history, Adrian Miller delves into the influences, ingredients, and innovations that make up the soul food tradition. Focusing each chapter on the culinary and social history of one dish--such as fried chicken, catfish, chitlins, greens, black-eyed peas, macaroni and cheese, cornbread, hot sauce, banana pudding, peach cobbler, pound cake, sweet potato pie, and "red drinks--Miller uncovers how it got on the soul food plate and what it means for African American culture and identity.Miller argues that the story is more complex and surprising than commonly thought. Four centuries in the making, and fusing European, Native American, and West African cuisines, soul food--in all its fried, pork-infused, and sugary glory--is but one aspect of African American culinary heritage. Miller discusses how soul food has become incorporated into American culture and explores its connections to identity politics, bad health raps, and healthier alternatives. This refreshing look at one of America's most celebrated, mythologized, and maligned cuisines is enriched by spirited sidebars, photographs, and twenty-two recipes.

An NAACP Image Award Finalist for Outstanding Literary Work—Non Fiction James Beard award–winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards,and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who played remarkable roles in unforgettable events in the nation's history. Daisy McAfee Bonner, for example, FDR's cook at his Warm Springs retreat, described the president's final day on earth in 1945, when he was struck down just as his lunchtime cheese souffle emerged from the oven. Sorrowfully, but with a cook's pride, she recalled, "He never ate that souffle, but it never fell until the minute he died." A treasury of information about cooking techniques and equipment, the book includes twenty recipes for which black chefs were celebrated. From Samuel Fraunces's "onions done in the Brazilian way" for George Washington to Zephyr Wright's popovers, beloved by LBJ's family, Miller highlights African Americans' contributions to our shared American foodways. Surveying the labor of enslaved people during the antebellum period and the gradual opening of employment after Emancipation, Miller highlights how food-related work slowly became professionalized and the important part African Americans played in that process. His chronicle of the daily table in the White House proclaims a fascinating new American story.

2014 James Beard Foundation Book Award, Reference and ScholarshipHonor Book for Nonfiction, Black Caucus of the American Library AssociationIn this insightful and eclectic history, Adrian Miller delves into the influences, ingredients, and innovations that make up the soul food tradition. Focusing each chapter on the culinary and social history of one dish--such as fried chicken, chitlins, yams, greens, and "red drinks--Miller uncovers how it got on the soul food plate and what it means for African American culture and identity.Miller argues that the story is more complex and surprising than commonly thought. Four centuries in the making, and fusing European, Native American, and West African cuisines, soul food--in all its fried, pork-infused, and sugary glory--is but one aspect of African American culinary heritage. Miller discusses how soul food has become incorporated into American culture and explores its connections to identity politics, bad health raps, and healthier alternatives. This refreshing look at one of America's most celebrated, mythologized, and maligned cuisines is enriched by spirited sidebars, photographs, and twenty-two recipes.

An NAACP Image Award Finalist for Outstanding Literary Work—Non FictionJames Beard award–winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards, and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who played remarkable roles in unforgettable events in the nation's history. Daisy McAfee Bonner, for example, FDR's cook at his Warm Springs retreat, described the president's final day on earth in 1945, when he was struck down just as his lunchtime cheese souffle emerged from the oven. Sorrowfully, but with a cook's pride, she recalled, "He never ate that souffle, but it never fell until the minute he died." A treasury of information about cooking techniques and equipment, the book includes twenty recipes for which black chefs were celebrated. From Samuel Fraunces's "onions done in the Brazilian way" for George Washington to Zephyr Wright's popovers, beloved by LBJ's family, Miller highlights African Americans' contributions to our shared American foodways. Surveying the labor of enslaved people during the antebellum period and the gradual opening of employment after Emancipation, Miller highlights how food-related work slowly became professionalized and the important part African Americans played in that process. His chronicle of the daily table in the White House proclaims a fascinating new American story.

Joy doesn’t like to eat spaghetti and meatballs. To be perfectly honest, Joy doesn’t like to eat anything but junk food. Well, it’s dinnertime and guess what’s on the menu? You got it, spaghetti and meatballs! Follow Joy as she tries to avoid eating her most dreaded foods and eat what she loves instead, while her mom comes up with an idea to help fix Joy’s meal-time problem.

Have you ever wanted to build and program a robot? An important first step is understanding how they work. Using accessible language and dynamic images, this book explains what robots fundamentally are and what they can do. Readers will also learn about many different types of robots and how they are being implemented in everyday life, including industrial robots, surgical robots, educational robots, and more. Students will gain a holistic understanding of robots and their technological evolution spanning from 1921 to present-day innovations.

From 14 to 25-years-old, Sam Martin's an afterthought in Nimbus. All this world wants is for him to leave, for him to go outside the steel doors and survive in the vicious, untamed wilderness for 11 years. After all, every person who has ever called Nimbus home has done it. Every. Last. One. Or so he was told.Outside the walls of Nimbus, Sam's faced with horrors unimaginable to someone who's spent his whole life stuck behind the steel. Now, he must fend off evils he's never seen, horrors he never could have expected—all while fighting himself. After all, he's just a kid. A kid who never knew how heavy fate could truly be.

The picture-perfect town of Glady hides a disturbing secret. On her first Sunday at Countryside Church, Rose meets a blue-haired boy who warns her that things are not what they seem. As she investigates, Rose gradually uncovers the terrifying truth, but doing so puts her in the middle of a very real spiritual battle for the fate of the church and the whole town. For there are some strongholds that are not easily uprooted.

A. D. Miller’s first installment of his autobiography was Ticket to Exile which recounts Miller’s coming-of-age in Depression-era Orangeburg, South Carolina. In it Miller reconstructs the sights, sounds, and social complexities of the pre-civil rights South, and his youth as a closet rebel who successfully evaded the worst strictures of a racially segregated small town. When Fall Rising begins, A. D. is nineteen and has just been exiled from Orangeburg, South Carolina for the “crime” of writing a white girl a seven word note: I would like to know you better. For this, he was arrested by two armed policemen, interrogated, charged with “attempted rape,” jailed, and released only on condition that he leave town. We pick him up as he leaves the train at Rockville Centre Station, Long Island, N.Y. where he has come to re-start his life.This book is both a personal story of sorrow, confusion and ultimate triumph and of a people’s ongoing saga from slavery and segregation to civil rights and the hope for a future in which they can equally share. Fall Rising follows A. D. through his life as he gets his first job, joins the Navy, heads off to Officer’s training and then to various colleges in Washington State, Nebraska , Colorado and UC Berkeley. He settles in Berkeley, California, marries a white woman (though they have to travel to Washington State where interracial marriage is legal to be married), has three children and tries to navigate the racist culture in which he finds himself. Even in the San Francisco Bay Area, jobs for which an African American man with a Master’s degree are trained are nearly impossible to get. He ends up doing menial labor once again. As he finds his way through his life, he refuses to stay within the boxes that the culture pushes him to stay inside. He forges a way, often fraught with hardship, to simply live as a free person in this country. All the while he carries with him the secret of his exile which he can speak about to no one but which colors everything he does. Finally, after much travail and many years lived finding ways around road blocks, he becomes a college teacher and after that, a much-acclaimed poet and writer, editor/publisher, theater producer and director, production coordinator, a director Near the end of Fall Rising, A. D writes: “I see now the terrible thing it was to live my life constantly in a defensive mode, or a mode of attack, never for a single moment to be able to breathe easy.” And that is, too, the terrible realization of his reader. Having lived fully and richly to the age of 92, Miller is an inspiration to generations of black folk as he shows how, with the help of community, he made a way out of no way.