A lively memoir—and an inspiration to do good in the kitchen and in the world.
The noted Spanish American chef and philanthropist offers his life story, complete with recipes.
Andrés, known both for his restaurants and his World Central Kitchen nonprofit, which brings food to war zones and disaster areas, might be forgiven for wanting to luxuriate among expensive toys: He grew up in a household where “money was not plentiful,” and at the end of the month his family ate croquetas “made from the last leftovers in the corner of the fridge.” Andrés, of abundantly large spirit, expresses both gratitude for the food and the lovely memory of how his parents taught him valuable lessons using food as a vehicle. Andrés imparts some of them, such as his father’s advice to “master the fire,” which means not just mastering yourself but also learning how to control the heat necessary to make a good dish. He has plenty of lessons to deliver, recalling how he left a soft position as an admiral’s cook during his stint in the Spanish navy so that he could cook for a ship’s crew. “You should never let slip the opportunity to tell the world what you want,” he observes. “Nothing will happen if you’re the only one who knows.” Andrés is superbly generous—his book concludes with a moving eulogy to seven of his nonprofit workers who were killed in Gaza—and a true patriot: “We’re all in this country together. We’re all on this planet together. Your success is my success. We the People.” About the only time he grows cross is when the subject of Donald Trump arises, on which he notes with quiet defiance, “You can build as many walls as you like. But there isn’t a wall high enough to stop the mother of a hungry child.” A bonus lesson: You don’t need so much water to cook pasta.
A lively memoir—and an inspiration to do good in the kitchen and in the world.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780063436152
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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