The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance

(Paperback)

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A big juicy dish bubbling with scandals and rivalries, thickened with oft-told secrets, chock full of random bits as if a boxful of mementos had been upended into the stew. Dig in, and it is likely to persuade you that this Clark Kent of a food editor really did exert superpowers on the cultural life of twentieth-century America (The Washington Post).

In 1957, America was a gastronomic wasteland. One man changed all that.

From his perch at the New York Times, Craig Claiborne led Americas food revolution. He took readers where they had never been before, and brought Julia Child and Jacques Ppin to national acclaim. He introduced us to the foods and tools we take for granted today, from crme frache and balsamic vinegar to arugula and the salad spinner. And he turned dinner into an eventdining out, delighting your friends, or simply cooking for your family.

But the passionate gastronome led a conflicted personal life. Forced to mask his sexuality, he was imprisoned in solitude and searched for stable and lasting love. In The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat, acclaimed biographer Thomas McNamee unfolds a new history of American gastronomy and reveals in full a great man who until now has never been truly known.

Reviews

Craig Claiborne was the greatest influence of my professional life in America. Knowledgeable, dedicated, and driven, he was determined to better American eating habits. As Thomas McNamee nicely portrays in The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat, Claiborne's impact on the culinary revolution of the last forty years cannot be ignored or overstated.
Jacques Ppin

Author Bio

Thomas McNamee is the author of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, Life, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He lives in San Francisco.