The Gourmands’ Way
Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy
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Narrated by:
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Bronson Pinchot
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By:
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Justin Spring
About this listen
A biography of six writers on food and wine whose lives and careers intersected in mid-20th-century France
During les trente glorieuses - a 30-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 30", 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 audiences. 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 70 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 reluctantly evolved into a brilliant writer on French food and wine.
Together, these writer-adventurers initiated an American cultural dialogue on food that has continued to this day. Justin Spring's The Gourmands' Way is the first book ever to look at them as a group and to specifically chronicle their Paris experiences.
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Ten Restaurants That Changed America reveals how the history of our restaurants reflects nothing less than the history of America itself. Whether charting the rise of our love affair with Chinese food through San Francisco's the Mandarin, evoking the richness of Italian food through Mamma Leone's, or chronicling French haute cuisine through Henri Soulé's Le Pavillon, Paul Freedman uses each restaurant to tell a story of race and class, immigration and assimilation.
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Worthwhile listen, cringe-worthy pronunciations
- By Tag Christof on 09-01-20
By: Paul Freedman
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Emily Post
- Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners
- By: Laura Claridge
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 18 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From the excesses of the late 19th-century Gilded Age, through the horrors of World War I, to the transformations of the Roaring 20s that gave birth to her magisterial Etiquette, Emily Post unfailingly took the measure of her era. A Baltimore blue blood with a populist heart, she helped the masses live the American dream with her hugely popular book, which has been continuously in print for over 85 years.
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Typical for Emily Post
- By Stephanie on 01-07-19
By: Laura Claridge
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The President’s Kitchen Cabinet
- The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas
- By: Adrian Miller
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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James Beard award - winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards, and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who played remarkable roles in unforgettable events in the nation's history.
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Disappointed
- By TS on 08-17-21
By: Adrian Miller
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When Paris Sizzled
- The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Annees folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them - one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior.
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Informative, but no sizzle
- By OzEnigma on 06-01-17
By: Mary McAuliffe
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Chop Suey
- A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States
- By: Andrew Coe
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1784, passengers on the ship Empress of China became the first Americans to land in China and the first to eat Chinese food. Today there are over 40,000 Chinese restaurants across the United States - by far the most plentiful among all our ethnic eateries. Now, in Chop Suey, Andrew Coe provides the authoritative history of the American infatuation with Chinese food, telling its fascinating story for the first time.
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Wanted to like this
- By Irene on 02-13-21
By: Andrew Coe
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The Billionaire's Vinegar
- The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
- By: Benjamin Wallace
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Abridged
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It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. In 1985, at a heated auction by Christie’s of London, a 1787 bottle of Château Lafite Bordeaux - one of a cache of bottles unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson - went for $156,000 to a member of the Forbes family. The discoverer of the bottle was pop-band manager turned wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, who had a knack for finding extremely old and exquisite wines. But rumors about the bottle soon arose.
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Not just for enophiles
- By Julie W. Capell on 06-03-09
By: Benjamin Wallace
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Outlaw Marriages
- The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples
- By: Rodger Streitmatter
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than a century before gay marriage became a hot-button political issue, same-sex unions flourished in America. Pairs of men and pairs of women joined together in committed unions, standing by each other "for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health" for periods of 30 or 40 - sometimes as many as 50 - years. In short, they loved and supported each other every bit as much as any husband and wife. In Outlaw Marriages, cultural historian Rodger Streitmatter reveals how some of these unions didn’t merely improve the quality of life for the two people involved but also enriched the American culture.
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Sames Sex Couples Through History
- By Susie on 12-11-12
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My Twenty-Five Years in Provence
- Reflections on Then and Now
- By: Peter Mayle
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 4 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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A celebration of 25 years of Provençal living - of lessons learned and changes observed - with his final book, Peter Mayle has crafted a lasting love letter to his adopted home, marked by his signature warmth, wit, and humor.
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The narrator ruins it for me.
- By Flossiesmommy on 07-05-18
By: Peter Mayle
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Empire of Self
- A Life of Gore Vidal
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well - a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.
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Well done!
- By Christopher on 03-22-16
By: Jay Parini
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Judgment of Paris
- California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine
- By: George M. Taber
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History houses, amid its illustrious artifacts, two bottles of wine: a 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon and a 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay. These are the wines that won at the now-famous Paris Tasting in 1976, where a panel of top French wine experts compared some of France's most famous wines with a new generation of California wines. Little did they know the wine industry would be completely transformed as a result....
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Only for the wine-obsessed
- By History on 12-01-11
By: George M. Taber
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Hippie Food
- How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat
- By: Jonathan Kauffman
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Food writer Jonathan Kauffman journeys back more than half a century - to the 1960s and 1970s - to tell the story of how a coterie of unusual men and women embraced an alternative lifestyle that would ultimately change how modern Americans eat. Impeccably researched, Hippie Food chronicles how the longhairs, revolutionaries, and back-to-the-landers rejected the square establishment of President Richard Nixon's America and turned to a more idealistic and wholesome communal way of life and food.
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If you grew up eating health food you'll love it
- By Susie Wyshak on 05-09-18
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The Potlikker Papers
- A Food History of the Modern South
- By: John T. Edge
- Narrated by: John T. Edge
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The Potlikker Papers tells the story of food and politics in the South over the last half century. Beginning with the pivotal role of cooks in the civil rights movement, noted authority John T. Edge narrates the South's journey from racist backwater to a hotbed of American immigration. In so doing, he traces how the food of the poorest Southerners has become the signature trend of modern American haute cuisine. This is a people's history of the modern South told through the lens of food.
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Best book of the year!
- By PD on 06-12-17
By: John T. Edge
What listeners say about The Gourmands’ Way
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Patricia M Hampl
- 05-31-21
Great book, occasionally annoying reader
Splendid research and deft narration and placement in the larger historical context, but the reading was often grating, especially the attempt to assign vocalizations of various figures.
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- Linda
- 01-27-18
More Than You Ever Wanted to Know
Boy was I surprised by this book and the detailed research involved. Every subject was interesting and I learned things about each one of these people that I had never read before. I loved that Bronson Pinchot read the footnotes as they occurred in the book as if I was the reader AND in a different voice.
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- Laura Ellis
- 01-22-19
Interesting Histories
Some very interesting history in this book, definitely worth a read - listen. There is a period when the narration changes to someone else and becomes very amateur - otherwise Bronson Pinchot does a brilliant job narrating the majority of the book.
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- L Mushlin
- 06-01-18
Easy, entertaining, and fun
An entertaining book that is kinder to the men than the women. The male writers are “resourceful, visionaries, and quietly honorable, while the females are fabulous liars, dependent upon their spouses’ contacts, or desperate for support. It is amusing that 2 of the males had multiple marriages and affairs, but M.F.K.Fisher is described as sexually rapacious for similar behavior.
But the gossip is fun to hear and it’s always entertaining to see icons brought down — if you can abide the narrators accents, however.
When saying French words, he sounds like he is speaking with a mouthful of marbles, and since there is a lot of French in this book, too much is literally lost in the translation. Even words common in English, like hors d’oeuvres and Bordeaux are barely intelligible. This might be one book that is better read in print.
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- Mendocino
- 11-26-17
Monotonous!!!!
I've seldom had a book as tedious as this one! The voice of the narrator doesn't change just one tone in the half book I've heard ! It is probably well written, but it is impossible to hear and stay put and not to fall sleep; besides, the life details of the gourmands are so uninteresting as narrated that I stopped at about 50% of the whole book! Not worth it!
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1 person found this helpful