The Gourmands' Way Lib/E: Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy
"Boston Globe" Product Description A biography of six writers on food and wine whose lives and careers intersected in mid-twentieth-century FranceDuring les trente glorieuses-a thirty-year boom period in France between the end of World War II and the 1974 oil crisis-Paris was not only the world's most delicious, stylish, and exciting tourist destination; it was also the world capital of gastronomic genius and innovation. The Gourmands' Way explores the lives and writings of six Americans who chronicled the food and wine of the glorious thirty, paying particular attention to their individual struggles as writers, to their life circumstances, and, ultimately, to their particular genius at sharing awareness of French food with mainstream American readers. In doing so, this group biography also tells the story of an era when America adored all things French. The group is comprised of the war correspondent A. J. Liebling; Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein's life partner, who reinvented herself at seventy as a cookbook author; M. F. K. Fisher, a sensualist and fabulist storyteller; Julia Child, a television celebrity and cookbook author; Alexis Lichine, an ambitious wine merchant; and Richard Olney, a reclusive artist who relu