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The man who ate too much : the life of James Beard / John Birdsall.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : W. W. Norton & Company, [2020]Edition: First editionDescription: xiv, 449 pages ,16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780393635713
  • 0393635716
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Preface -- The swaddled ham -- Mangoes in Panama -- Jue Let's true essence of chicken -- Cecil Fanning's tea cake -- Early peas and other private pleasures -- The Duchess of Windsor's corned beef hash balls -- Brioche en surprise -- The country omelet of New Canaan, Connecticut -- Pheasant Souvaroff, an American dish -- Pissaladière at the hamburger stand -- American cheese -- Woo Him with calf's head -- Perdita bakes a layer cake -- Coronation chicken -- "More cakes, more tastes" -- Cold Sicilian roulade with the master -- Shattered glass and schneckenoodles -- Salmon quiche à la Carl -- Late raspberries for Christmas -- Raisin bread redemption -- Epilogue: Miss Lewis's biscuits for the dead.
Summary: "The definitive biography of America's best-known and least understood food personality, and the modern culinary landscape he shaped. After World War II, a newly affluent United States reached for its own gourmet culture, one at ease with the French international style of Escoffier, but also distinctly American. Enter James Beard, authority on cooking and eating, his larger-than-life presence and collection of whimsical bow ties synonymous with the nation's food for decades, even after his death in 1985. In the first biography of Beard in twenty-five years, acclaimed writer John Birdsall argues that Beard's struggles as a closeted gay man directly influenced his creation of an American cuisine. Starting in the 1920s, Beard escaped loneliness and banishment by traveling abroad to places where people ate for pleasure, not utility, and found acceptance at home by crafting an American ethos of food likewise built on passion and delight. Informed by never-before-tapped correspondence and lush with details of a golden age of home cooking, The Man Who Ate Too Much is a commanding portrait of a towering figure who still represents the best in food"-- Provided by publisher.
List(s) this item appears in: LGBTQIA+ Reads for Adults Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Dr. James Carlson Library Biography BEARD, J. B618 Available 33111009769890
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography BEARD, J. B618 Available 33111010434393
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In the first portrait of James Beard in twenty-five years, John Birdsall accomplishes what no prior telling of Beard's life and work has done: He looks beyond the public image of the "Dean of American Cookery" to give voice to the gourmet's complex, queer life and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the twentieth century. At a time when stuffy French restaurants and soulless Continental cuisine prevailed, Beard invented something strange and new: the notion of an American cuisine.

Informed by previously overlooked correspondence, years of archival research, and a close reading of everything Beard wrote, this majestic biography traces the emergence of personality in American food while reckoning with the outwardly gregarious Beard's own need for love and connection, arguing that Beard turned an unapologetic pursuit of pleasure into a new model for food authors and experts.

Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1903, Beard would journey from the pristine Pacific Coast to New York's Greenwich Village by way of gay undergrounds in London and Paris of the 1920s. The failed actor-turned-Manhattan canapé hawker-turned-author and cooking teacher was the jovial bachelor uncle presiding over America's kitchens for nearly four decades. In the 1940s he hosted one of the first television cooking shows, and by flouting the rules of publishing would end up crafting some of the most expressive cookbooks of the twentieth century, with recipes and stories that laid the groundwork for how we cook and eat today.

In stirring, novelistic detail, The Man Who Ate Too Much brings to life a towering figure, a man who still represents the best in eating and yet has never been fully understood--until now. This is biography of the highest order, a book about the rise of America's food written by the celebrated writer who fills in Beard's life with the color and meaning earlier generations were afraid to examine.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 373-433) and index.

"The definitive biography of America's best-known and least understood food personality, and the modern culinary landscape he shaped. After World War II, a newly affluent United States reached for its own gourmet culture, one at ease with the French international style of Escoffier, but also distinctly American. Enter James Beard, authority on cooking and eating, his larger-than-life presence and collection of whimsical bow ties synonymous with the nation's food for decades, even after his death in 1985. In the first biography of Beard in twenty-five years, acclaimed writer John Birdsall argues that Beard's struggles as a closeted gay man directly influenced his creation of an American cuisine. Starting in the 1920s, Beard escaped loneliness and banishment by traveling abroad to places where people ate for pleasure, not utility, and found acceptance at home by crafting an American ethos of food likewise built on passion and delight. Informed by never-before-tapped correspondence and lush with details of a golden age of home cooking, The Man Who Ate Too Much is a commanding portrait of a towering figure who still represents the best in food"-- Provided by publisher.

Preface -- The swaddled ham -- Mangoes in Panama -- Jue Let's true essence of chicken -- Cecil Fanning's tea cake -- Early peas and other private pleasures -- The Duchess of Windsor's corned beef hash balls -- Brioche en surprise -- The country omelet of New Canaan, Connecticut -- Pheasant Souvaroff, an American dish -- Pissaladière at the hamburger stand -- American cheese -- Woo Him with calf's head -- Perdita bakes a layer cake -- Coronation chicken -- "More cakes, more tastes" -- Cold Sicilian roulade with the master -- Shattered glass and schneckenoodles -- Salmon quiche à la Carl -- Late raspberries for Christmas -- Raisin bread redemption -- Epilogue: Miss Lewis's biscuits for the dead.

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