About this item

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.



About the Author

John Birdsall

I grew up near San Francisco and learned to cook at Greens Restaurant in that city. I spent the next seventeen years in professional kitchens there and in Chicago, and did some writing as a side gig, including food stories and restaurant reviews for the San Francisco Sentinel, a pioneering LGBTQ weekly. After leaving the kitchen, I was a restaurant critic and features writer at the Contra Costa Times and East Bay Express, and the editor of SF Weekly's food blog. In 2014, I won a James Beard Award for food and culture writing for "America, Your Food Is So Gay" in Lucky Peach, and another in 2016 for "Straight-Up Passing" in the queer food journal Jarry. I've written for Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times, and taught culinary writing at the San Francisco Cooking School. I'm married to Perry Lucina, an artist and designer, and live in Tucson.



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