When Top Chef judge Gail Simmons first graduated from college, she felt hopelessly lost. All her friends were going to graduate school, business school, law school . . . but what was she going to do? Fortunately, a family friend gave her some invaluable advice-make a list of what you love to do, and let that be your guide. Gail wrote down four words:
Eat. Write. Travel. Cook.
Little did she know, those four words would become the...

A former White House head chef, who made his way from a farm in rural Mississippi to West Point and a twenty-four-year military career, chronicles his time holding one of the most prestigious culinary positions in the United States.

"Traveling across four continents, from the ruins of Iraq to the savannahs of Kenya, Witold Szablowski tracked down the personal chefs of five dictators known for the oppression and massacre of their own citizens: Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Uganda's Idi Amin, Albania's Enver Hoxha, Cuba's Fidel Castro, and Cambodia's Pol Pot-and listened to their stories over sweet-and-sour soup, goat-meat pilaf, bottles of rum, and games of gin rummy. Dishy, deliciously...

"It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother's house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations. Marcus Samuelsson was only three years old when he, his...

Who among us has the courage to keep chasing our dreams, even when those dreams shatter into a million pieces? In Chasing Harvest, culinary wunderkind Kevin O'Connor charts his remarkable journey from Californian hometown teen prodigy to globe-trotting Chef-at-Large for international olive oil producer Cobram Estate. Anchored around the company's olive harvests in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres, it reveals the trials and tribulations that...

Beloved teacher and bestselling cookbook author Marcella Hazan tells how a young girl raised in Emilia-Romagna became America's godmother of Italian cooking. Widely credited with introducing proper Italian food to the English-speaking world, Hazan, now 84, looks back on the adventures of a life lived for pleasure and a love of teaching.

"This picture book biography recounts the extraordinary life of Augustus Jackson, an African American entrepreneur who is known as the "Father of Ice Cream.""--

Presents the life of Tie Sing, a Chinese trail cook, who was hired by millionaire Stephen Mather to cook for him and his associates as part of Mather's efforts to create a national park service and for whom Sing Peak in Yosemite is named.

Julie Powell is a frustrated insurance worker who wants to be a writer. Trying to find a challenge in her life, she decides to cook her way through Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' in one year, and to blog about it. As Julie begins to find her groove as a cook, and her voice as a writer, the project takes on a life of its own. The project provides the struggling young woman with her life's purpose, to her very pleasant surprise....