A well-researched, glitzy, and flawed history of conspicuous consumption.
A new perspective on the rise of the leisure class.
In his latest book, former Travel + Leisure features editor Barr (Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste, 2013) dives into the many aspects of the restaurant industry during the belle epoque era that laid the groundwork for today’s fine-dining experience. The author focuses on the unlikely union of two entrepreneurs: Swiss hotelier César Ritz (1850-1918) and French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935). The two men shared an insatiable appetite for culinary success, but it wasn’t just the food they were concerned about. By working together to bring the now-renowned Savoy Hotel to its current glory, Ritz and Escoffier introduced epicurean principles to a general public that had no point of reference to understand such lifestyles. “The nouveaux riches had arrived,” writes Barr, “but until now, there had never been anywhere for them to go to announce their arrival. They had rarely been invited to the exclusive dinner parties or private clubs of high society. But now there was the Savoy. The restaurant may have served the most refined, daring, and sometimes shockingly expensive food in the world, but it was not exclusive….The Savoy offered a new and democratic kind of luxury, and cooking was very much at the center of it.” In this process, Ritz and Escoffier created a whole new breed of city dwellers dedicated to “a life of pleasure, a theater of luxury.” The two would later go on to create the Hotel Ritz in Paris. As in his previous book, it’s clear that Barr has done extensive research to master his topic, and the book serves as an expansive resource for those interested in learning more about the turn-of-the-century leisure class. However, the never-ending name-dropping becomes distracting and tiresome. The story would have benefited from more social and cultural analysis and fewer fabulous cameos.
A well-researched, glitzy, and flawed history of conspicuous consumption.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8041-8629-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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