A warm, homey collection of recipes from the lighter side of Italian cuisine, clear enough for kitchen newcomers.
Mazzarella's debut provides a blend of family lore and recipes in this cookbook and loving tribute to his mother.
Benigna Preziosi Mazzarella lived to be nearly 108 years old. Her son thinks he knows why: good genes, hard work and her own home cooking, which, like the long life she lived, was unsentimental and unpretentious. She made her own pasta by hand—served in tiny, primi-appropriate portions—but when she wanted a fat-free, sugar-free treat, she turned to modern convenience foods like pudding and Jell-O mixes. The recipes—about 50 in all, from the basic pasta and lentils to “Mama’s Elusive Vinegar Chicken”—reflect this mix of New and Old World sensibilities. Beyond portion size, Mazzarella says his mama stayed slim her whole life by heaping on the vegetables and eschewing nearly all fat. Mama also worked as a seamstress until she was 80 and put dinner on the table for her family every night. That means readers won’t find too many labor-intensive or long-simmering dishes in this collection. Nor are there many hard-to-find ingredients (Mama Mazzarella never drove and walked a mile each way to the grocery store, which would quell anyone’s appetite for expensive oils), with one exception: pullia, or pennyroyal in English. Mazzarella devotes an entire chapter to the lengths his family would go in search of this beloved plant, and he shares a pasta recipe featuring the herb. Although Mama never wrote down her recipes, Mazzarella has taken pains to record them professionally, thoroughly and clearly; his prose is straightforward and his tone is light. Immigrating to America as a young adult, Mama raised her family in New Jersey, where she lived a life essentially free from drama. Mazzarella’s account of her life, taking up about a third of the book, is fittingly understated: no scandals, no heartbreak, seemingly no connections at all to the politics and events of the 20th century, even though his mother lived through every year of it. Just good luck, good health and good food.
A warm, homey collection of recipes from the lighter side of Italian cuisine, clear enough for kitchen newcomers.Pub Date: June 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475913958
Page Count: 194
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.
In this debut memoir, Bahamian millionaire Bastian offers insight into building a business.
The author was a millionaire by the time he was 19, an impressive feat considering he began his working life filling stockpots and rolling napkins in his father’s Nassau restaurant, a locals’ hole-in-the-wall far from the city’s tourist hotels. “In many ways, I started ten steps behind the starting line in a world where opportunities felt few and far between,” writes Bastian in his introduction. A poor student with a gambler’s risk tolerance and a salesman’s eye for an unserved market, the author dropped out of college to launch his own satellite installation business—the first of its kind in the Bahamas—eventually expanding into prepaid phones and other electronics. With this book, Bastian uses his personal experiences to illustrate the steps aspiring entrepreneurs should consider when building their own empires. “My goal isn’t just to tell my story,” he explains; “it’s to provide you with a starting point, a strategy, and the encouragement you need to take your first step toward something bigger.” The book alternates between memoiristic chapters describing the author’s youth and career and instructional chapters outlining the best practices to “become a lion” (his preferred metaphor for a brave, risk-taking captain of industry). From evaluating one’s skill set and choosing a suitable goal to the practicalities of regulation and taxes, Bastian walks the reader through the complicated processes of starting and maintaining a successful enterprise. While much of the advice is of the boilerplate variety, the author offers it with clarity and candor, devoting an entire chapter, for example, on how to fail productively. It is the biographical material that lends his advice unusual weight—Bastian’s stories of flying back and forth between the Bahamas and Miami to personally import satellite dishes are fascinating enough to stand on their own. Readers may be unable to replicate his success, but there is no denying that his tale is inspiring.
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798891882485
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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