Feminism is a very loaded word. Girldrive attempts, through photography, reporting and booze, to deconstruct the word and find out what it means to be a woman. “[B]eing a feminist is not ignoring the fact that if you’re a woman you experience things in a certain way, no matter what,” says one of Nona and Emma’s subjects. An inspired gift for any budding feminist or new college student. Without being preachy, this book explores and reveals both America and American women.

In this era of factory produced food, mammoth corporate chain restaurants, and the overall reliance on poor quality fast and frozen food, a counter food movement focused on the local, organic and sustainable has been gaining more steam every day. That’s hardly surprising. Many of us seem to realize something vital is missing in our basic culinary lives and much of that boils down to simplicity, tradition and uniqueness. There was actually a time in the recent past when Americans enjoyed locally grown vegetables, filled their tables with meat from animals raised according to ethical traditions, and shopped each day for the fresh items needed for the day’s meals.

Mark Kurlansky , who previously wrote the fabulous food histories Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World and Salt: A World History, now offers up a portrait of the US “before the national highway system, before the chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation’s food was seasonal, and traditional.” You see, back during the Depression, FDR’s Works Progress Administration employed scores of writers and a number of those writers were sent out into the field to record American cooking and eating habits. The result is a documentary time capsule, capturing this moment of social history right before it was about to change forever in the period of post-war prosperity that saw the birth of mass food production and the TV dinner. Kurlansky brings together many of these writings to paint a portrait of a gloriously un-homogenized America.

AMAZON

When you think about it, the legacy of the Iranian elections last year isn’t going to be anything that actually happened in Iran. The thing we’re all going to remember about that election is how profoundly it demonstrated the power of Twitter. One of the biggest selling points of Twitter at the time was that it was “the only way” to get information out of the country.  Reading 44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World you learn that during the Iranian revolution, photographer David Burnett had to smuggle his film out of the country by going to the airport and searching for “pigeons” who might be willing to carry it to Paris where they handed it off to a correspondent. The photographs still made it out, but their journey required physical, not digital ingenuity.

44 Days is an annotated compilation of the photographs he took during that time. The book chronicles the last days of the Shah’s rule, the protests and bloodshed that followed and the return of Ayatollah Khomenini. The photographs are accompanied by Burnett’s journal-like descriptions of each experience. Essentially, it’s a compilation of his Twitter stream, except, there was no Twitter. He writes objectively about the political situation, the emotions of the crowd and his own investigative journey. Burnett also writes about the relationship of the press to the government, and to the protesters.

If you wanted to distill a modern college education down to a single book, The Knowledge Book would likely be it. These 400 pages offer overviews on everything from philosophy and culture to rundowns on all the major religions, systems of government and technological developments, as well as the basics of science and mathematics and historical delineation of humankind’s artistic movements over the centuries. Put a ribbon and bow on it and it’s like a B.A. in a box, or buy it for yourself to brush up on all the stuff you forgot or wanted to avoid to protect your GPA. It’s a great coffee table book for those commercial breaks if you’re feeling brain rot coming on from your overindulgence in evening TV vegging out. Meanwhile, if you or your intended gift recipient failed science class or avoided it altogether, National Geographic’s Concise History of Science and Invention will fill in all those knowledge gaps with its wide-ranging look at human ingenuity from pre-history to the present.

AMAZON

All of us are annoyed by the people who reuse sandwich baggies and tin foil, but are secretly guilty that we don’t do the same. All of us are bothered when dinner plans revolve around the lone vegan in the group, but admit (only to ourselves) they have a point. Colin Beavan decides to take these practices to the next level. His aim is leave no carbon foot print, to have no trash, no toxins, etc. To essentially put his money where his mouth is; as an environmentalist. And he makes his family do the same, in New York City, no less. A smart gift idea for any tree-hugging cousin you might have, or the neighbor who offers to take your recycling out for you.