An IACP Cookbook Award finalist. “A good primer for beginning cooks and an excellent reference for experienced cooks needing a refresher.” —ChicagoNow Prep School is the ultimate collection of the weekly Chicago Tribune column of the same name, written by culinary instructor and award-winning food writer James P. DeWan. This compilation is focused on teaching readers how to become better cooks, from amateurs who are learning to cook for themselves or their families to professional and gourmet chefs who are searching to perfect their technique. Illustrated with full-color photography and a plethora of simple, plainspoken instructions, Prep School is an easy go-to guide for becoming more adept at any kitchen skill. Prep School is filled with more than fifty delicious recipes, as well as insightful and straightforward tips on knife skills, preparation techniques, pantry essentials, holiday meals, and general advice on how to make your kitchen as user-friendly as possible. Before any home cook or professional chef picks up a cookbook, they should first pick up Prep School and be sure to take DeWan’s advice to heart. His recommendations on improving kitchen efficiency and ease, along with his in-depth knowledge of shortcuts and cooking common sense, make DeWan the perfect teacher for any aspiring culinary student. Finalist for 2014 International Association of Culinary Professionals’ Best Compilation Cookbook Award “From cooking with booze to conquering crab cakes, reading James P. DeWan’s column has helped me graduate from cooking like I still live in a college dorm.” —RedEye

In a compelling and sometimes shocking account, Vyvyen Brendon dwells not on the adult purposes behind a peculiarly British institution but on the lives of the children.

Although New England boarding schools have been educating America's elite for four generations, they, along with their privileged students, rarely have been the subject of study. Living in a senior boys' dorm at a co-ed school, Sarah Chase was able to witness the inner workings of student culture and the dynamics of their peer groups. In an environment of ivy-covered buildings, institutional goals of excellence and aspirations to Ivy League colleges, the boys and girls acted extremely masculine or feminine. While girls typically worked themselves into a state of sleep deprivation and despair during exam period, the boys remained seemingly unconcerned and relaxed. As much as the girls felt pressure to be "cute" and "perfect," the boys felt pressure to be "bad ass" and the "best at everything." Tellingly, the boys thought that "it would suck" to be a girl, while over one third of the girls wanted to be male if given the chance. From her vantage point of sitting in the back of the football and field hockey buses, attending prom and senior pranks, and listening to how students described their academic and social pressures, competition, rumors, backstabbing, sex, and partying, Chase discovered that these boys and girls shared similar values, needs and desires despite their highly gendered behavior. The large class, ethnic and individual differences in how the students perform their genders reveal the importance of culture in development and the power of individual agency. This book examines the price of privilege and uncovers how student culture reflects and perpetuates society and institutional power structures and gender ideologies.

The book offers a comprehensive look at college preparatory boarding schools in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom through the eyes of recent graduates who are now attending prestigious colleges and universities such as Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge. The approach is distinctive, giving readers the opportunity to get the real "inside story" from their peers and learn more about what the schools are like than the youngsters and their parents could learn in a campus visit or standard guidebook. The book does a great job presenting a wealth of information in a diverse array of voices. Student readers will no doubt feel that the reviewers quoted in the book shared many of their questions and concerns as students, and parents are likely to appreciate the frankness of the reviewers' comments as well. Excerpts from the book: "My college counselor also had good relationships with college admissions officers and was able to update me on how they'd reacted to my applications. In the end, I applied to Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Harvey Mudd, and Caltech (California Institute of Technology), and I got into all of them, so I was happy with my college counselor's efforts (and the efforts of the CCO as a whole) in promoting my application, as well as in helping me decide where I wanted to go." - MIT student "Students at Groton tend to be either very smart, very rich, or both (because some people just seem to have it all). Many kids have attended private schools their whole lives. The school favors well-rounded individuals. Athletic recruits also have to be intelligent. In my time at Groton, the kids who were not motivated enough to get through the school's rigors ended up leaving. The admissions process requires an interview, during which I recommend candidates dress conservatively while showing themselves to be original thinkers." - Harvard student "The British exam system is, for the most part, based on assessment objectives: tick the boxes and you're guaranteed a great result. At Eton, while you are taught to tick the boxes, this is merely a preliminary measure: the emphasis in on going beyond the exam and enjoying the subject in all its depth" - Oxford student "Gaining admission to St. Albans can prove quite difficult, because it is arguably the most selective school in the Washington, D.C., area. However, distinguishing oneself above other applicants is no mystery. Performing well on the SSATs and the ISEEs certainly helps the admissions officers look at an applicant more favorably. However, the dynamic applicant that St. Albans seeks extends far beyond standardized tests." - University of Pennsylvania student Boarding schools in the United States: Cate School Choate Rosemary Hall Cranbrook Schools Deerfield Academy Groton School Hotchkiss School Kent School Lawrenceville School Loomis Chaffee School Mercersburg Academy Middlesex School Milton School Nobles and Greenough School Northfield Mount Hermon School Peddie School Phillips Exeter Academy Phillips Academy Andover St. Albans School St. George's School St. Paul's School Tabor Academy Thacher School Webb Schools Boarding schools in the United Kingdom: Benenden School Cheltenham Ladies' College Downe House School Eton College Fettes College King's School, Canterbury Oundle School Radley College Rugby School Sevenoaks School Shrewsbury School St. Paul's School, London St. Swithun's School Tonbridge School Westminster School, London Winchester College Boarding schools in Canada: Bishop Strachan School St. Michaels University School St. George's School, Vancouver Get instant online access to hundreds of reviews and rankings by MIT Ivy League and Oxbridge educated insiders: http: //www.PrepReview.com and facebook.com/PrepReview to win a free book

On the universal quest for personal independence and for fulfillment of growing-up dreams, a small-town Minnesota boy turns to raising runt piglets as a way to earn spending money of his own. Then a series of mysterious and unexpected postcards from a school called Phillips Exeter Academy begins to arrive, flooding his plans with uncertainty and confusing his inexperienced parents as to what is best for their son. From Piglets To Prep School: Crossing A Chasm describes the unanticipated and fundamentally unwanted struggle that this young boy faces as the postcards, eventually inviting him to attend the school on scholarship, continue to interrupt a comfortably familiar existence in his home town a life of growing up in a virtual clone of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon of Prairie Home Companion. Though satisfied at home, an inner voice seduces him to abandon his youthful dreams and join the cadre of elite preppies in New England. Overnight, names of his schoolmates change from Gary Gardner and Duane Labs to David Rockefeller and Peter Benchley. The social, economic, cultural, and academic shocks of such change are immediate and stunning yet mostly manageable. This entertainingly illustrated book is a poignant and humorous memoir that will resonate with anyone who remembers his or her growing-up years. Share the fun, sadness, discoveries, disappointments, and pranks of a young hayseed kid uprooted from bucolic rural life and transplanted into the rocky New England garden of stuffy and highly competitive preppies. You'll be challenged to read the book without alternately laughing and crying as memories of your own early years are rekindled!

Being a young werewolf in the Fifth Grade at a supernatural prep school comes with its own built-in drama. Angry witches and warlocks, pesky vampires, and new girls who know way too much about everything are all part of the norm; no need to go looking for trouble. So, when the older group of vampire bullies is charged with stealing the witches' most powerful book of spells, Rusty doesn't get involved. Given all the torment and atomic wedgies, which vampires are particularly good at giving out, he'd rather leave the Bishop Boys to the comeuppance they deserve. But when he learns that the elder peace in Nalamist Falls actually hangs in the balance, he has no choice. A species war will destroy Rusty's world and all the relationship he's made with his supernatural friends, his only friends really. Wedgies or no, Rusty and his friends commit to doing whatever they can to keep the peace, even interfering in "grown-up" business that turns out to be way bigger than any of them ever expected.

Halloween at a supernatural prep school is the best. How could it not be? All the best costumes and over-the-top decorations, and the entire town joining in the fun... not to mention an old-school twist on the celebration to honor the Harvest Moon and the first year Rusty and his friends are allowed to go out with no parents; it's just enough to make this the best Halloween ever. But with a few new acquaintances and some old enemies teaming up to ruin all their trick-or-treating plans, things turn bad quickly. Rusty's pack is down a member from the start and half the town has been recruited by the "bad guys" and turned against them, including someone none of them would've ever expected. Very quickly, the best Halloween ever turns into a fight to survive the night in one piece.