The Gourmands' Way: Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy,Used

A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of 2017 and a Christian Science Monitor Best Book of 2017. Winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Award in Culinary History.'The broad outline of Spring's thesis is so persuasive, the details so evocative (not to mention mouth watering), that anyone interested in the evolution of cooking in America will find The Gourmands' Way informative and indispensable.' Wendy Smith, The Boston GlobeA biography of six writers on food and wine whose lives and careers intersected in midtwentiethcentury France.During the thirtyyear boom in France following World War IIles Trente GlorieusesParis was not only the worlds most stylish tourist destination, it was also the world capital of gastronomic genius. In The Gourmands Way, Justin Spring tells the story of six American writeradventurers having the time of their lives in the City of Light during this period and, in doing so, transforming the way Americans talk and think about foodand the way they eat.The six are A. J. Liebling, Alice B. Toklas, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Alexis Lichine, and Richard Olney. The Gourmands Way is the first book ever to look at these unforgettable figures as a group. It is also the first to focus specifically on their Parisbased adventures. Liebling was a great war correspondent, reporter, and humorist who opens Springs narrative by sweeping into Paris with the French and Allied forces in August 1944; Toklas was Gertrude Steins life partner who reinvented herself at age seventyfive as a cookbook author; Fisher was a sensualist storyteller and fabulist; Child was a cookbook author, Americas greatest television food celebrity, and the reinventor of the dinner party; Lichine was an ambitious wine merchant who, through an astounding series of risktaking ventures, became the leading importer of French wines in America; and Olney was a reclusive but freewheeling artist who reluctantly evolved into one of the foremost American writers on French cuisine and French wine.Justin Spring focuses on the most joyful, exciting, formative, and dramatic moments of these six lives, many of which were intimately connected to the exploration and discovery of fine French food and drinkwhether they experienced it at top Michelinstarred restaurants or straight from a hot plate in an artists garret. The Gourmands Way leads us through both the fabled world of haute cuisine and the vibrant bohemian and artistic haunts of the Left Bank during the 1950s. Intimate, anecdotal, and beautifully researched, The Gourmands Way is an eyeopening exploration of the rich, storied annals of midtwentiethcentury FrancoAmerican culinary history.