TO THE BONE

Name: TO THE BONE
Author: Paul Liebrandt
ISBN: 978-0-7704-3416-8

by Paul Liebrandt ; Andrew Friedman photographed by Evan Sung ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 3, 2013

For those addicted to following the rise, fall and eventual resurrection of celebrity chefs, Liebrandt’s story will be an...

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Acclaimed chef Liebrandt and Friedman (Knives at Dawn: America's Quest for Culinary Glory at the Bocuse d'Or, the World's Most Prestigious Cooking Competition, 2009) collaborate in a “literary tasting menu,” chronicling the chef’s bumpy yet supersonic rise in the culinary world and the prestigious chefs who influenced his career.

Packed with a bounty of dazzling recipes and photos and told chronologically, Liebrandt’s story begins in London. At the age of 13, the author began washing dishes in a new restaurant, prophetically called New York, New York. By the age of 24, Liebrandt had become the youngest chef to receive a three-star review from the New York Times, for his work at Atlas in Greenwich Village. The author recounts his stints with the famous chefs he apprenticed under while sharpening his skills, always pondering his next move. “It was no small thing to have worked for Marco Pierre White, Richard Neat, Raymond Blanc, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten all by the age of twenty-two,” he writes. “The Big Question in my life was as enticing as it was daunting: What next?” By 1999, Liebrandt’s desire to continue his innovative style and his outspoken personality propelled him to New York, where he finally moved to the next level. “I was only twenty-four. Relatively young to be handed the keys to the kitchen of a place like Atlas. But something told me I could handle it,” he writes. The author’s recipes reflect his idiosyncratic approach to “The Food,” which serves as “the object of an existential quest, to be pursued at the expense of just about everything else,” and they are not for the timid. Adventurous cooks can indulge their tastes and test their culinary skills with Duck Leg Torte, Beer Brined Pork Shoulder, Beet Hibiscus-Glazed Foie Gras or White Truffle Gnudi with Abalone Butter, among other decadent dishes.

For those addicted to following the rise, fall and eventual resurrection of celebrity chefs, Liebrandt’s story will be an essential ingredient on their reading menu.

Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-7704-3416-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Clarkson Potter

Review Posted Online: April 9, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)