num_pages: 449
description: A biography of six writers on food and wine whose lives and careers intersected in mid-twentieth-century FranceDuring les trente glorieuses a thirty-year boom period in France between the end of World War II and the 1974 oil crisisParis was not only the worlds 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 thirty 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 readers. 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 Steins life partner who reinvented herself at seventy 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 Springs The Gourmands Way is the first book ever to look at them as a group and to specifically chronicle their Paris experiences.
language: English
title: The Gourmands' Way: Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux