A highly readable, well-researched narrative chronicling America’s boring culinary past and the one man who altered its...
Taking on the subject of another giant in the food world, McNamee (Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, 2008, etc.) traces the life of the fascinating and troubled man who transformed America’s bleak culinary landscape into the lush food environment of today.
In a media world jammed with TV shows featuring celebrity chefs, thousands of cookbooks, food blogs, specialty stores devoted to kitchen tools and ubiquitous online restaurant reviews, it is hard to perceive what passed for cuisine in 1950s America. Home cooking was belittled as drudgery, and the country lacked great cooking schools like those in Europe. Food criticism as a profession didn’t exist, and the new TV culture hailed frozen foods as the next great leap forward for homemakers. Craig Claiborne (1920–2000) grew up steeped in the succulent flavors of the Mississippi Delta, and he attended a leading hotel school in Switzerland, where he absorbed the techniques of classical French cooking and formal service. He became the food editor for the New York Times in1957, beginning a reasoned critique of New York’s restaurant scene and the lackluster culture of American food. “Henceforward, and with steadily increasing force,” writes McNamee, “he would become America’s leading authority on food. A good review from Craig Claiborne would have a restaurant’s telephones ringing day and night; a bad one would silence them.” For the next 30 years, Claiborne was the emperor of food, writing hundreds of food columns and publishing more than 20 books. He explored exotic locations and their cuisines and introduced a rainbow of new ingredients and flavors to America’s kitchens. He also launched the careers of numerous culinary personalities, including Marcella Hazan and Diana Kennedy, and he elevated home cooking into a joyful experience. McNamee deftly explores the glittering public life and far-reaching contributions Claiborne made to America’s food culture, as well as his troubled personal life.
A highly readable, well-researched narrative chronicling America’s boring culinary past and the one man who altered its course forever.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4391-9150-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
