Next book

ESSENTIAL PEPIN

MORE THAN 700 ALL-TIME FAVORITES FROM MY LIFE IN FOOD

Showcases a lifetime of remarkable achievements by the ambassador of French cuisine.

The world-famous chef returns with more than 700 handpicked recipes retooled for the vicissitudes of today’s kitchen and garnered from more than 60 years of experience.

Pepin’s latest (Jacques Pepin More Fast Food My Way, 2008, etc.) reflects the insouciant grandeur of a man whose phenomenal influence and success in modern cooking can hardly be exaggerated: the author of 18 bestselling books; winner of an Emmy Award for his syndicated PBS series; recipient of the Légion d'Honneur; etc. Yet he miraculously manages to convey with freshness and excitement his life’s passion to equip home cooks of every stripe with something to please every palate. Soups, salads, puddings, soufflés and crepes are all on display, as well as recipes for charcuterie and offal in addition to standard fare like poultry and game. The author organizes this wealth of information into a harmonious and fascinating read. Pepin's roots run deep and true, and he fittingly closes with a recipe for Mulled Wine and a tribute to his boyhood home: “On cold winter nights, this is the drink of choice for farmers in the Beaujolais area of Burgundy, where I come from.”

Showcases a lifetime of remarkable achievements by the ambassador of French cuisine.

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-547-23279-9

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011

Categories:
Next book

I AM OZZY

An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.

The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.

Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.

An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009

Next book

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories:
Close Quickview