Sweet Land

Bishop E.W. Jackson’s life story unites Americans around a shared legacy of freedom. As a great grandson of slaves, he believes that the promise of liberty has always belonged to all Americans. For some, only their heirs would be the full beneficiaries.

In Sweet Land of Liberty: A History of America in 11 Pies, food writer Rossi Anastopoulo cracks open our relationship to pie with wit and good humor. She traces the pies woven into our history, following the evolution of our country across centuries of innovation and change and examining how America’s relationship with this iconic dessert impacted culture across eras—and vice versa.

The settlement of North America was the beginning of a new era in human history. The oppressive laws, habits, and customs of the Old World no longer held such power over those who had made the treacherous journey across the Atlantic. No reigning monarch or dictatorial power ever stepped onto the ground of North America. Yet, despite this, the men and women of the 13 colonies of North America were still not free until they threw off the shackles of England's government and asserted their own rights.

In this audiobook, you will find yourself set down in a mysterious redbrick townhouse in rural Illinois (“A House on the Plains”), working things out with a baby-kidnapping couple in California (“Baby Wilson”), living on a religious-cult commune in Kansas (“Walter John Harmon”), and sharing the heartrending cross-country journey of a young woman navigating her way through three bad marriages to a kind of bruised but resolute independence (“Jolene: A Life”).

When a wealthy client visits Mathilde’s dressmaking shop, she finds herself drawn into the only surviving circle of luxury left in a barren London. Attending parties offers a welcome escape from life governed by ration cards and a strictly enforced child policy. Here she meets enigmatic government minister George and piano-playing Jaminder, with whom an intense friendship blossoms. As their relationship grows stronger, George’s grip on Mathilde tightens....