A dynamic, ruminative journal for food lovers and armchair globe-trotters.
An actor, producer, and director recounts his tour of various countries’ cuisines and economic challenges.
David Moscow, star of the cable television series From Scratch, combines his dual love of food and international travel in this whirlwind gastronomic adventure in search of food sources, history, cooking styles, botany, and biology. Together with his creative partner and father, Jon, Moscow spent four years visiting 20-plus countries in search of the most vivid atmospheres, agriculturally challenging environments, and interesting food-related stories he could find. Each culinary jaunt results in an unadulterated, smart, beautifully rendered, and often thrilling entry to a travel journal that begins in New York with lessons on oyster cultivation in the Long Island Sound and ends with a pizza tasting in Naples. In South Africa, Moscow explores the region’s economic inequalities while learning about its native foods from a pair of seasoned chefs. One chef introduced the author to the delicacies of “boiled and blowtorch-seared sheep’s head” while they “bonded over my repulsion.” (Everyone’s tastes vary, and even Moscow calls some dishes “gut-turning.”) The American is gleefully welcomed in Malta to forage for snails and fish for octopus while learning that the region’s potable water resources are roughly 50% reliant on desalination plants. He hunts for feral pigs in Texas, scouts out a memorable elk dish from a Wyoming food truck, discusses sustainability options with a cafe and bakery owner in the Philippines, cooks scallops in Iceland, and learns about some of the over 2,800 native varieties of potato in Peru from a “potato whisperer.” Moscow gets his hands dirty harvesting mushrooms in Finland before fishing for anchovies on the Amalfi Coast and comparing pizza styles in Naples.
Moscow lavishes his evocative descriptions on every local dish and landscape (on Iceland: “Trees give context to your own size, but there—with only the volcanoes and glaciers and fjords to measure yourself—you just feel incredibly small”). He also has clearly done his homework in researching these far-flung locations. Each section is a history lesson as well as an informed discussion on food sourcing, preparation methods, and the economic and climate conditions enhancing (or threatening) each area’s ecosystem: “The economics of South Africa’s impoverished, landless majority has also led to poaching by large cartels, which can hire local people to do the actual poaching. We’ve heard about the rhinos, but not about the macadamias, avocados, oranges, etc. There is a huge security industry of cameras and fencing set up to catch bands of burglars who pull up with trucks in the middle of the night and clean out a harvest.” While depicting the ways food moves from farm to table in each country, Moscow’s narrative opens up larger conversations on more serious issues of food-production hurdles and critical global current events, like monocultures, wildlife preservation efforts, and harmful overfishing. Included are 10 recipes for favorite meals from the author’s journeys, like “Trout Piscator,” “Da Michele Pizza Dough,” “Acorn Fritters,” and “Snails in Maltese Landscape.” This is delicious, adventuresome entertainment for the mind, soul, heart, and stomach. A dynamic, ruminative journal for food lovers and armchair globe-trotters.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 9781637584026
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Permuted Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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