 |
|
|
|
|
Hometown Appetites |
|
|
The Story of Clementine Paddleford, the Forgotten Food Writer Who Chronicled How America Ate
Kelly Alexander - Author
Cynthia Harris - Author
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Book: Hardcover | 9.25 x 6.25in | 352 pages | ISBN 9781592403899 | 18 Sep 2008 | Gotham Books | 18 - AND UP |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The rollicking biography of Clementine Paddleford: “a go- anywhere, taste-anything, ask-everything kind of reporter who traveled more than 50,000 miles a year in search of stories. . . . matched as a regional-food pioneer only by James Beard.” (R. W. Apple , Jr., The New York Times)
In Hometown Appetites, an award-winning food writer and a leading university archivist come together to revive the legacy of the most important food writer you have never heard of. Clementine Paddleford was a Kansas farm girl who grew up to chronicle America’s culinary habits. Her weekly readership at the New York Herald Tribune topped 12 million during the 1950s and 1960s and she earned a salary of $250,000. Yet twenty years after “America’s bestknown food editor” passed away, she had been forgotten— until now.
At a time when few women worked outside the home, Paddleford flew her own Piper Cub to meet her readers and find out what was for dinner. Before Paddleford, newspaper food sections were dull primers on home economy. But she changed all of that, composing her own brand of sassy, unerringly authoritative prose designed to celebrate regional home cooking. Her magnum opus, a book called How America Eats, published in 1960, reveals an appetite for life that was insatiable. This book restores Paddleford’s name where it belongs: in the pantheon alongside those of James Beard and Julia Child. It’s a five-star read in the spirit of national bestsellers such as Heat and The United States of Arugula.
“If the U.S.A. can be said to have a national palate, then it was Ms. Clementine Paddleford, from Manhattan, Kansas, who invented it. This colorful, lively, intricately researched biography brings this forgotten hero of the great American food revolution, vividly to life.”
—Adam Platt, food and restaurant columnist, New York magazine
“Finally a wonderful book about the missing great presence in American food, Clementine Paddlefor, the flaky and adventurous original.”
—Barbara Kafka, author of Vegetable Love and Soup, A Way of Life
“The next best thing to a dinner invitation from Clementine Paddleford herself, Hometown Appetites is a riveting three-dimensional portrait of this iconic American food personality.”
—Steven Shaw, author of Turning the Tables and Asian Dining Rules
"Alexander and Harris’s excellent biography tells the story foremost of a journalist, a writer who travelled tens of thousands of miles in pursuit of first hand accounts of the way we live. Clementine Paddleford was among the first American writers to sense that what and how we ate day to day, whether in Hawaii, Louisiana or Kansas, or New York, provided a clear view of what America was as a nation. Hometown Appetites is fascinating, long overdue account of a seminal figure in America's food revolution."
—Michael Ruhlman, author of The Elements of Cooking
“Decades before Anthony Bourdain and The Galloping Gourmet, the indomitable Clementine Paddleford traveled the globe (sometimes piloting the airplane herself!) to deliver stories and recipes to millions of readers of the The New York Herald Tribune. Kelly Alexander's superb, engaging biography of this pioneering food- writer--a Kansas farmer's daughter--is essential reading, not only for today's foodies and feminists, but really for anyone who yearns to know more about American regional cooking.”
—Matt Lee and Ted Lee, authors of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook
“Reading Clementine Paddleford as a kid taught me the value of a bizarre byline. Now she's been rediscovered for a new generation as a character worthy of that singular name.”
—Regina Shrambling, Gastropoda.com
|
|
|
Email Alerts
To keep up-to-date, input your email address, and we will contact you on publication
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Download the Penguin App for iPhones and get exclusive excerpts and access to the blog, podcast and more. Click here for information.
|
|
|
|
