A unique and delectable work that sheds new light on the lives of women, food, and men.
A culinary biographer serves up an eye-opening meal.
Renowned food journalist and culinary historian Shapiro (Julia Child: A Life, 2007, etc.) takes her obsession with food in an entirely new direction. Focusing on six women over nearly 200 years, she hopes to prove that “food talks.” Opening a “window on what [each] cooked and ate” reframes the narratives of their lives; it’s like “standing in line at the supermarket and peering into” their shopping carts. Dorothy Wordsworth was a quiet, “very private, very conflicted woman” who devoted her life to her brother, William. But she also found time to write in her journal, an activity that was “her declaration of independence. And she chose the language of food.” Entries about nature and their surroundings were often drawn upon for William’s poems, but the notes on food “spoke directly to Dorothy herself.” Cockney-born Rosa Lewis, a former scullery maid, was acclaimed in her time as one of the great caterers and a favorite cook of King Edward. He loved her signature dish, game pie. During this era of wealth and manners, food became a symbol of success, and Lewis was there to ride it to fame. Eleanor Roosevelt didn’t really care what she ate; it gave her no pleasure. Her husband enjoyed oysters and champagne, and when she learned of his infidelity she got back at him via her terrible cook, Mrs. Nesbitt. The only thing that really mattered to the “passive, faithful, and decorative” Eva Braun was her love for vegetarian Hitler, champagne, and showing off her “slender figure.” British novelist Barbara Pym was the great chronicler of food and eating throughout her many novels, and Helen Gurley Brown, longtime editor of Cosmopolitan, was an obsessive dieter (“skinny to me is sacred”); she cooked primarily to keep her man.
A unique and delectable work that sheds new light on the lives of women, food, and men.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-525-42764-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
PROFILES
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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