Dearie : the remarkable life of Julia Child
(2012)

Nonfiction

Book

Call Numbers:
BIOGRAPHY/CHILD,J

Availability

Locations Call Number Status
Biography & Memoir BIOGRAPHY/CHILD,J Available

Details

PUBLISHED
New York : Knopf, [2012]
©2012
DESCRIPTION

557 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

ISBN/ISSN
0307272222 (alk. paper), 9780307272225 (alk. paper)
LANGUAGE
English
NOTES

"This is a Borzoi book."

Paradise -- "On her way" -- Julia of the almost spring -- Only a butterfly -- Keeper of the secrets -- Paul -- A diamond in the rough -- Lucky to be alive -- Devouring Paris whole -- Lady sings the bleus -- What she'd gotten herself into -- A memorable feast -- Frenchy French -- This elephant of ours -- Julia's turn to bloom -- Taking everything in stride -- A monstrously busy life -- A law unto herself -- The mad women of La Peetch -- A household name -- We are not all eternal -- Looking forward -- Enough -- The end of an era -- No one gets out alive -- The beginning of the end -- The raft

It is rare for someone to emerge in America who can change our attitudes, our beliefs, and our very culture. It is even rarer when that someone is a middl0--aged, six-foot three-inch woman whose first exposure to an unsuspecting public is cooking an omelet on a hot plate on a local TV station. And yet, that is exactly what Julia Child did. The warble voiced doyenne of television cookery became an iconic cult figure and joyous rule breaker as she touched off the food revolution that has gripped America for more than fifty years. In this biography, the Julia we know and love comes to life. In it the author provides a portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential Americans of our time, a woman known to all, yet known by only a few. At its heart, this biography is a story about a woman's search for her own unique expression. Julia Child was a directionless, gawky young woman who ran off halfway around the world to join a spy agency during World War II. She eventually settled in Paris, where she learned to cook and collaborated on the writing of what would become Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a book that changed the food culture of America. She was already fifty when The French Chef went on the air, at a time in our history when women were not making those leaps. Julia became the first educational TV star, virtually launching PBS as we know it today; her marriage to Paul Child formed a decades long love story that was romantic, touching, and quite extraordinary. A fearless, ambitious, supremely confident woman, Julia took on all the pretensions that embellished tony French cuisine and fricasseed them to a fare-thee-well, paving the way for everything that has happened since in American cooking, from TV dinners and Big Macs to sea urchin foam and the Food Channel. Julia Child's story, however, is more than the tale of a talented woman and her sumptuous craft. It is also a saga of America's coming of age and growing sophistication, from the Depression Era to the turbulent sixties and the excesses of the eighties to the greening of the American kitchen. Julia had an effect on and was equally affected by the baby boom, the sexual revolution, and the start of the women's liberation movement. On the centenary of her birth, Julia finally gets the biography she richly deserves. An in-depth, intimate narrative, full of fresh information and insights, this biography is the story of one of our most fascinating and beloved figures