THE MAN WHO ATE TOO MUCH: The Life of James Beard , by John Birdsall. (Norton, 480 pages, $20.) Food writer John Birdsall, who has a g...
THE MAN WHO ATE TOO MUCH: The Life of James Beard, by John Birdsall. (Norton, 480 pages, $20.) Food writer John Birdsall, who has a gift for “the one perfectly placed word”, according to our reviewer, Ligaya Mishan, discusses the life and culinary prowess of James Beard in this comprehensive and delicious biography. “Birdsall’s phrases also have rhythm and compress time and place so that a meal becomes a story.”
MY YEAR ABROAD, by Chang-rae Lee. (Riverhead, 496 pages, $17.) This novel chronicles the extraordinary year that Tiller Bardmon, a young white man of Chinese descent, spends with a Chinese-American entrepreneur, as well as the suburban life that follows. As our reviewer, Alexander Chee, commented, the book is “a wild, wisecracking, funny, ambitious picaresque, full of sex and danger.”
THE KINDEST LIE, by Nancy Johnson. (Tomorrow, 352 pages, $16.99.) Ruth Tuttle is in a successful marriage in Chicago until conversations about starting a family bring up questions about the child she gave up for adoption years before in her blue-collar hometown of the Indiana, prompting her to return in search of answers. As noted by our reviewer, Mary Pols, this is an “easy, approachable novel filled with hard, important truths.”
HOOKED: Food, Free Will, and How Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions, by Michael Moss. (Random House, 304 pages, $18.) According to our reviewer, Daniel E. Lieberman, this story brings together investigative reporting, science and food writing to illustrate how the processed food industry manipulates “addictive feelings” to make Americans addicted to deeply unhealthy foods. .
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