Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table: A Collection of Essays from the New York Times (Hardcover)  | Released: 17 Nov 2008

The sound of fat snapping in a pan sets the mood of a place; the hurried peeling of carrots or a sink of abandoned dishes suggests the pressures of everyday life. Food is, in fact, the most familiar and universal medium in our lives. Everyone has a great food story to tell, and during her tenure as the New York Times Magazine’s food editor, Amanda Hesser show-cased the food-inspired recollections of some of America’s leading writers. Eat, Memory collects the best 26 of those stories and the recipes that accompany them. Tom Perrotta explains how his long list of food aversions almost landed him in an East German prison. Ann Patchett confronts her stubbornness in a heated argument she once had with her boyfriend over dinner at the famed Paris restaurant Taillevent. Gabrielle Hamilton finds that hiring a blind cook leads her into ethical terrain she wasn’t prepared to navigate. And poet Billy Collins considers his relationship with a fish he once ate. Food also figures into a misbegotten lunch, a chef’s deceit, a state of paranoia, and even a small miracle. About The Author Amanda Hesser has been a food columnist and editor at the New York Times for more than a decade. The author of two award-winning books - The Cook and the Gardener and Cooking for Mr. Latte - Hesser lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two children. Table of Contents IntroductionIllusions Paris Match - Ann Patchett The Great Carrot Caper - Dan Barber The Fish - Billy Collins The Squeamish American - Tom Perrotta The Absolutely No-Anything Diet - George Saunders Discoveries The Sixth Sense - Gary Shteyngart The Dining Room Wars - R W Apple Jr I Scream - Colson Whitehead Orange Crush - Yiyun Li Michelin Man - James Salter Struggles A Not-So-Simple Plan - Patricia Marx The Sauce and the Flury - Julia Child with Alex Prud’ Homme Bean There - Tucker Carlson Home Turf - Kiran Desai Line of Sight - Gabrielle Hamilton Loss Expatriate Games - John Burnham Schwartz Inward Bound - Chang-Rae Lee Our Lady of Lawson - Pico Iyer American Dreams - Jon Robin Baitz Compliments of the Nurse - Dawn Drzal Coming Home Turning Japanese - Heidi Julavits A Taste of Home - Manil Suri Ghosts of Passovers Pasts - Ana Winger Eau God - Henry Alford Family Menu - Allen Shawn Crossing to Safety - Dorothy Allison