How To Sew A Button: And Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew

How to Sew a Button offers instruction on things that you may have forgotten (or never even learned in the first place). Important things, like how to make blueberry pancakes.

Erin Bried, who serves as a senior staff writer for SELF magazine, interviewed a bevy of pre-Depression-born grandmothers to compile this invaluable book, which might sit best somewhere between your dictionary and your BUST archives. All the grandmothers step-by-step lessons are organized into 10 tidy subjects--like Cleaning, Dressing, and Loving--making the book easily navigable. There's something for everyone in this must-have how-to: for the hunter, "How to Fillet a Fish"; for the cook, "How to Use Grease as Flavoring"; for the activist, "How to Speak Your Mind at a Town Hall Meeting"; for the outcast, "How to Make Friends"; and for the lush, "How to Brew Your Own Beer." There are things in this book you never even realized you wanted to know, such as, "How to Fold a Fitted Sheet" (which is the book's money shot, if I may).

"How to Sew a Button" is also sprinkled with seriously cute illustrations, and it's funny to boot. Take, for instance, this quote from "How to Grocery Shop": "Think of the grocery store the same way you'd think of a male model. Everything you should be putting in your mouth is on the outside, and there's hardly anything of substance on the inside." Well put!