An informative and charming food and travel memoir.
A 20-something’s account of how he became a leading importer of truffles and other exotic specialty foods for some of America’s most elite restaurants.
The son of an American mother and Indian father, Purkayastha grew up in Houston and Fayetteville, Arkansas. Dyslexia and neural processing delay issues made schoolwork a struggle, but when his grandfather introduced him to cooking and rock collecting, his life changed. As he cultivated his love of food, school took a back seat to his new interest in gemology and to the small business he created selling stones to his classmates. The author became “hooked on mushrooms” after his parents moved to Arkansas and his uncle taught him the basics of foraging. After tasting his first truffle-infused meal, Purkayastha enthusiastically began researching truffles. He then bought his first truffles from Italy and sold them to restaurants around Fayetteville. Business boomed, and he began attending truffle festivals and high-end food shows around the country. At 16, the author met his first business partner, a wholesaler from Italy named Ubaldo. Two years later, after a decision to delay—and then forgo—college, Purkayastha was selling Ubaldo’s truffles to celebrated restaurants all over New York City. The partnership ended, however, once he realized that his Italian partner was taking advantage of him because he was young. The author then formed a lucrative business with other partners (whom he eventually bought out) while expanding his company’s line to include foraged edibles. His work took him all over Europe, where he learned some of the “dark, shadowy, shady” truths about the food business. Gun-toting hunters and wholesalers protected truffle patches as though they were drug stashes, and buyers, including Ubaldo, routinely bought truffles from Eastern Europe and sold them as the more coveted Italian or French varieties. Complemented by recipes and a glossary of exotic food terms, the book is a unique blend of bildungsroman and foodie/truffle primer sure to appeal to a wide audience.
An informative and charming food and travel memoir.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-38395-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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