Warren St. John

Warren St. John, Outcasts United.

Join the Laurel Book Club for a group discussion of the book; copies may be picked up at the circulation desk beginning approximately a month beforehand. Clarkston, Ga., 13 miles east of Atlanta, has been changed by an onslaught of refugees from many lands. Luma Mufleh, an American-educated Jordanian woman, coaches the players in soccer, and tries to make a difference in all aspects of their lives. (PuddinTame)… (more)

Warren St. John , Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town.

Warren St. John will discuss and sign copies of his new book, Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town. This is the remarkable story of a group of refugee kids from all over the world (Sudan, Congo, Kosovo, Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan) who all play on the same soccer team in Clarkston, Georgia, a small town 13 miles from Atlanta. St. John chronicles their struggle to make a new life in America alongside the story of their astonishing Jordanian female coach, Luma Mufleh, who shows the players that anything is possible with dedication and hard work. (booksense)… (more)

Warren St. John , Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town.

Clarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern town until it was designated a refugee settlement center in the 1990s, becoming the first American home for scores of families in flight from the world's war zones--from Liberia and Sudan to Iraq and Afghanistan. Suddenly Clarkston's streets were filled with women wearing the hijab, the smells of cumin and curry, and kids of all colors playing soccer in any open space they could find. The town also became home to Luma Mufleh, an American-educated Jordanian woman who founded a youth soccer team to unify Clarkston's refugee children and keep them off the streets. These kids named themselves the Fugees. Set against the backdrop of an American town that without its consent had become a vast social experiment, Outcasts United (Spiegel & Grau, $24.95) follows a pivotal season in the life of the Fugees and their charismatic coach. New York Times reporter Warren St. John documents the lives of a diverse group of young people as they miraculously coalesce into a band of brothers, while also drawing a fascinating portrait of a fading American town struggling to accommodate its new arrivals. (booksense)… (more)

Frank Stitt reads from Bottega Favorita: A Southern Chef's Love Affair with Italian Food.; Warren St. John

In this companion to his first, best-selling cookbook, the beloved Southern chef Frank Stitt travels to Italy and brings the best of Mediterranean cuisine back home. To Stitt's mind, the two regions—Italy and the American South—share commonalities. Both native cuisines have a tradition of turning humble ingredients—ground corn, bitter greens, cured pork, the daily catch—into poetry on the plate. And as the chef points out in his lively introduction to the book, this is elemental cooking based on the purity and simplicity of the freshest and finest ingredients. Yet leave it to Stitt to make Italian cuisine his own. "There's no Pompano in Venice, but ours, fresh from Apalachicola, fits into the cartoccio (Italian fish stew) perfectly; our Chilton County white peaches are squeezed by hand for a bellini; our wild Gulf shrimp, oysters, crab, and fish are easily a match for their Mediterranean equivalents," Stitt writes. This appealing new cookbook includes the best of the Southern-influenced Italian recipes he has served at his Birmingham, Alabama, restaurant Bottega Restaurant and Café, for the last two decades—the Tomato Chutney and Roasted Sweet Pepper Pizza, Lamb Shanks with Sweet Peas and Mint, and fabulous desserts including Zabaglione Meringue Cake. Accompanied by sweet recollections of his journeys to Italy, this inspiring and accessible cookbook proves once again why the novelist Pat Conroy calls Stitt "the best chef in America." (clong)… (more)