Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child
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An authorized look at the life of one of the world's best-loved gourmets. Publishers Weekly Julia McWilliams was always adventurously hunting for food to fill her 6'2" frame. When, in her late 20s, the Smith College-educated Californian took a wartime job with the OSS that sent her to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and China, she began cultivating a taste for authentic eatables as an alternative to service fare. Almost resigned to spinsterhood, she met and married Cambridge, Mass.-born government official Paul Child, who was on Asian duty, and accompanied him to his USIA posts in France and Germany. A gastronomical epiphany that occurred in Rouen, at the bistro where the couple once lunched, led her to attend the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Parisand the rest is history. In 1961, Child published the three-pound bestseller Mastering the Art of French Cooking when she was 49, and a few years later she was a TV superstar conducting gustatory symphonies with whisks and pans and patter. Her life is told warmly and compellingly by Fitch, author of several books on literary and culinary Paris, who nicely captures Child's exuberant mannerisms and plummy voice that fans know so well. Her graphic diary-letters, extracted at length by Fitch, register the couple's experiences together and the emotions they shared. Now in her mid-80s, Child lives in a retirement village in Santa Barbara, Calif. (Oct.)
Western Pioneers and Blue Blood1 Beginnings32 A Place in the Sun133 Education of an Extrovert304 Smith College: Ivy Walls and Jelly Donuts475 Career Search65Spying and Romance6 India Intrigue897 To China with Love1058 Eastward Ho1279 Flavors of Marriage142An American in Paris (Marseilles, Bonn, and Oslo)10 A Paris15511 Cordon Bleu17412 Marseilles: Fishing for Reds19913 A Little Town in Germany21814 Back Home (and Cooking) on the Range23415 "I Am at Heart a Viking"24916 Launching the Book26917 Let Them Eat Quiche: The French Chef28518 ProvencalWinters30219 The Media Are the Message32220 Celebrity and Solitude339Empress of Cuisine21 Riding the Second Wave35722 A Time of Loss37923 The Company She Keeps39724 Pacific Overtures41525 Seasoned with Love43526 Notre Dame de la Cuisine45627 Do Not Go Gentle480AppendicesFamily Trees503Television Series506Acknowledgments and Sources507Notes513Bibliography547Index553
