The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard

The definitive biography of America’s best-known and least-understood food personality, and the modern culinary landscape he shaped.

In the first portrait of James Beard in twenty-five years, John Birdsall accomplishes what no prior telling of Beard’s life and work has done: He looks beyond the public image of the "Dean of American Cookery" to give voice to the gourmet’s complex, queer life and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the twentieth century. At a time when...