A light, entertaining story of how a man turned his pipe dream into a profitable, highly respected business.
How the author created the ultimate American diner experience in Paris.
Carlson’s love of all things French began when he was required to take a foreign language in high school. Learning French changed his perspective on the world, and it was only natural to choose France as his destination for his collegiate study-abroad program. When his year overseas was up, he returned to America to continue pursuing his screenwriting career. But it was while eating an American breakfast complete with buckwheat pancakes that Carlson had an epiphany that changed his life. He realized the food he was eating wasn’t available in Paris. “Suddenly, I could see everything so clearly….I realized all those twists and turns, all those ups and downs....They really had happened for a reason. And at that moment, I knew exactly what I wanted to do—no, had to do next: open an American diner in Paris! I even knew what I was going to call it—Breakfast in America.” With nonstop enthusiasm, the author details the many obstacles he faced to make his dream a reality. He needed to secure money from investors, create a viable business plan, find a good location, hire employees, create a menu, and find sources for American foods, all while on French soil and following French rules, which turned out to be vastly different from those in the United States. Despite all these setbacks, the exhaustion that comes from working almost every minute, and the difficulty convincing Parisians that American food and coffee are actually tasty, Carlson’s desire to bring American diner food to Paris paid off (there are now three locations). The author demonstrates that no idea is too crazy if one has the determination to pursue it to its fruition.
A light, entertaining story of how a man turned his pipe dream into a profitable, highly respected business.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4926-3212-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
