#1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of How to Change Your Mind, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Food Rules

Food. There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because in the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion--most of what we're consuming today is longer the product of nature but of food science. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American Paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we see to become. With In Defense of Food, Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

Michael Pollan is the] designated repository for the nation's food conscience.--Frank Bruni, The New York Times

A remarkable volume . . . engrossing . . . Pollan] offers those prescriptions Americans so desperately crave.--The Washington Post

A tough, witty, cogent rebuttal to the proposition that food can be redced to its nutritional components without the loss of something essential... a] lively, invaluable book.--Janet Maslin, The New York Times

In Defense of Food is written with Pollan's customary bite, ringing clarity and brilliance at connecting the dots.--The Seattle Times

Michael Pollan's most recent food book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation--the story of our most trusted food expert's culinary education--was published by Penguin Press in April 2013, and in 2016 it served as the inspiration for a four-part docuseries on Netflix by the same name.

Pollan is also the author of How to Change Your Mind What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

NOW AN ORIGINAL SERIES ON ABC - "Just may be the best new comedy of the year] . . . based on restaurateur Eddie Huang's memoir of the same name . . . a] classic fresh-out-of-water comedy."--People

"Bawdy and frequently hilarious . . . a surprisingly sophisticated memoir about race and assimilation in America . . . as much James Baldwin and Jay-Z as Amy Tan . . . rowdy and] vital . . . It's a book about fitting in by not fitting in at all."--Dwight Garner, The New York Times

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS

Assimilating ain't easy. Eddie Huang was raised by a wild family of FOB ("fresh off the boat") immigrants--his father a cocksure restaurateur with a dark past back in Taiwan, his mother a fierce protector and constant threat. Young Eddie tried his hand at everything mainstream America threw his way, from white Jesus to macaroni and cheese, but finally found his home as leader of a rainbow coalition of lost boys up to no good: skate punks, dealers, hip-hop junkies, and sneaker freaks. This is the story of a Chinese-American kid in a could-be-anywhere cul-de-sac blazing his way through America's deviant subcultures, trying to find himself, ten thousand miles from his legacy and anchored only by his conflicted love for his family and his passion for food. Funny, moving, and stylistically inventive, Fresh Off the Boat is more than a radical reimagining of the immigrant memoir--it's the exhilarating story of every American outsider who finds his destiny in the margins.

Praise for Fresh Off the Boat

"Brash and funny . . . outrageous, courageous, moving, ironic and true."--New York Times Book Review

"Mercilessly funny and provocative, Fresh Off the Boat is also a serious piece of work. Eddie Huang is hunting nothing less than Big Game here. He does everything with style."--Anthony Bourdain

"Uproariously funny . . . emotionally honest."--Chicago Tribune

"Huang is a fearless raconteur. His] writing is at once hilarious and provocative; his incisive wit pulls through like a perfect plate of dan dan noodles."--Interview

"Although writing a memoir is an audacious act for a thirty-year-old, it is not nearly as audacious as some of the things Huang did and survived even earlier. . . . Whatever he ends up doing, you can be sure it won't look or sound like anything that's come before. A single, kinetic passage from Fresh Off the Boat . . . is all you need to get that straight."--Bookforum

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald - Newsday - The Huffington Post - Financial Times - GQ - Slate - Men's Journal - Washington Examiner - Publishers Weekly - Kirkus Reviews - National Post - The Toronto Star - BookPage - Bookreporter

Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; Hamilton's own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton's idyllic past and her own future family--the result of a prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends. By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton's story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion.

Features a new essay by Gabrielle Hamilton at the back of the book

Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.

"My sister is pregnant with a Lemon this week, Week 14, and this is amusing. My mother's uterine tumor, the size of a cabbage, is Week 30, and this is terrifying."

When her mother is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, Karen Babine--a cook, collector of thrifted vintage cast iron, and fiercely devoted daughter, sister, and aunt--can't help but wonder: feed a fever, starve a cold, but what do we do for cancer? And so she commits herself to preparing her mother anything she will eat, a vegetarian diving headfirst into the unfamiliar world of bone broth and pot roast.

In these essays, Babine ponders the intimate connections between food, family, and illness. What draws us toward food metaphors to describe disease? What is the power of language, of naming, in a medical culture where patients are too often made invisible? How do we seek meaning where none is to be found--and can we create it from scratch? And how, Babine asks as she bakes cookies with her small niece and nephew, does a family create its own food culture across generations?

Generous and bittersweet, All the Wild Hungers is an affecting chronicle of one family's experience of illness and of a writer's culinary attempt to make sense of the inexplicable.

The New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed memoir from cultural icon and culinary standard bearer Alice Waters recalls the circuitous road and tumultuous times leading to the opening of what is arguably America's most influential restaurant.

When Alice Waters opened the doors of her little French restaurant in Berkeley, California in 1971 at the age of 27, no one ever anticipated the indelible mark it would leave on the culinary landscape--Alice least of all. Fueled in equal parts by naivet and a relentless pursuit of beauty and pure flavor, she turned her passion project into an iconic institution that redefined American cuisine for generations of chefs and food lovers. In Coming to My Senses Alice retraces the events that led her to 1517 Shattuck Avenue and the tumultuous times that emboldened her to find her own voice as a cook when the prevailing food culture was embracing convenience and uniformity. Moving from a repressive suburban upbringing to Berkeley in 1964 at the height of the Free Speech Movement and campus unrest, she was drawn into a bohemian circle of charismatic figures whose views on design, politics, film, and food would ultimately inform the unique culture on which Chez Panisse was founded. Dotted with stories, recipes, photographs, and letters, Coming to My Senses is at once deeply personal and modestly understated, a quietly revealing look at one woman's evolution from a rebellious yet impressionable follower to a respected activist who effects social and political change on a global level through the common bond of food.

A beautifully written food memoir chronicling one woman's journey from her rural Midwestern hometown to the intoxicating world of New York City fine dining--and back again--in search of her culinary roots

Before Amy Thielen frantically plated rings of truffled potatoes in some of New York City's finest kitchens--for chefs David Bouley, Daniel Boulud, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten--she grew up in a northern Minnesota town home to the nation's largest French fry factory, the headwaters of the fast food nation, with a mother whose generous cooking dripped with tenderness, drama, and an overabundance of butter.
Inspired by her grandmother's tales of cooking in the family farmhouse, Thielen moves north with her artist husband to a rustic, off-the-grid cabin deep in the woods. There, standing at the stove three times a day, she finds the seed of a growing food obsession that leads her to the sensory madhouse of New York's top haute cuisine brigades. But, like a magnet, the foods of her youth draw her back home, where she comes face to face with her past and a curious truth: that beneath every foie gras sauce lies a rural foundation of potatoes and onions.
Amy Thielen's coming-of-age story pulses with energy, a cook's eye for intimate detail, and a dose of dry Midwestern humor. Give a Girl a Knife offers a fresh, vivid view into New York's high-end restaurants before returning Thielen to her roots, where she realizes that the marrow running through her bones is not demi-glace but gravy--thick with nostalgia and hard to resist.

Camas Davis was at an unhappy crossroads. A longtime magazine editor, she had left New York City to pursue a simpler life in her home state of Oregon, with the man she wanted to marry, and taken an appealing job at a Portland magazine. But neither job nor man delivered on her dreams, and in the span of a year, Camas was unemployed, on her own, with nothing to fall back on. Disillusioned by the decade she had spent as a lifestyle journalist, advising other people how to live their best lives, she had little idea how best to live her own life. She did know one thing: She no longer wanted to write about the genuine article, she wanted to be it.

So when a friend told her about Kate Hill, an American woman living in Gascony, France who ran a cooking school and took in strays in exchange for painting fences and making beds, it sounded like just what she needed. She discovered a forgotten credit card that had just enough credit on it to buy a plane ticket and took it as kismet. Upon her arrival, Kate introduced her to the Chapolard brothers, a family of Gascon pig farmers and butchers, who were willing to take Camas under their wing, inviting her to work alongside them in their slaughterhouse and cutting room. In the process, the Chapolards inducted her into their way of life, which prizes pleasure, compassion, community, and authenticity above all else, forcing Camas to question everything she'd believed about life, death, and dinner.

So begins Camas Davis's funny, heartfelt, searching memoir of her unexpected journey from knowing magazine editor to humble butcher. It's a story that takes her from an eye-opening stint in rural France where deep artisanal craft and whole-animal gastronomy thrive despite the rise of mass-scale agribusiness, back to a Portland in the throes of a food revolution, where Camas attempts--sometimes successfully, sometimes not--to translate much of this old-world craft and way of life into a new world setting. Along the way, Camas learns what it really means to pursue the real thing and dedicate your life to it.

Part memoir, part cookbook, this classic of food literature is an immersion course in authentic, regional French home cooking from a world-renowned culinary authority.

As a young woman, Madeleine Kamman developed her passion for food by working in the kitchens of France's most respected regional cooks. She dedicates one chapter to each of these remarkable women, who nourished her appetite for the tradition, rigor, and deeply personal nature of cooking. Her exuberant memoir--originally published over 30 years ago--tells of collecting mussels at the shore, churning butter from the milk of village cows, gathering mushrooms in nearby woods, and then transforming them into glorious meals under the tutelage of her beloved mentors. Over 250 recipes for the simple dishes Kamman learned at their sides accompany her evocative reminiscences of a bygone era in rural France. Now in paperback, this classic is required reading for anyone who wants to know more about la cuisine fran aise and the life, times, and tastes of a woman who helped to shape American cooking.

JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINEE - NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"One of the great culinary stories of our time."--Dwight Garner, The New York Times

It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother's house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations. Yes, Chef chronicles Samuelsson's journey, from his grandmother's kitchen to his arrival in New York City, where his outsize talent and ambition finally come together at Aquavit, earning him a New York Times three-star rating at the age of twenty-four. But Samuelsson's career of chasing flavors had only just begun--in the intervening years, there have been White House state dinners, career crises, reality show triumphs, and, most important, the opening of Red Rooster in Harlem. At Red Rooster, Samuelsson has fulfilled his dream of creating a truly diverse, multiracial dining room--a place where presidents rub elbows with jazz musicians, aspiring artists, and bus drivers. It is a place where an orphan from Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, living in America, can feel at home.

Praise for Yes, Chef

"Such an interesting life, told with touching modesty and remarkable candor."--Ruth Reichl

"Marcus Samuelsson has an incomparable story, a quiet bravery, and a lyrical and discreetly glittering style--in the kitchen and on the page. I liked this book so very, very much."--Gabrielle Hamilton

"Plenty of celebrity chefs have a compelling story to tell, but none of them can top this] one."--The Wall Street Journal

"Elegantly written . . . Samuelsson has the flavors of many countries in his blood."--The Boston Globe

"Red Rooster's arrival in Harlem brought with it a chef who has reinvigorated and reimagined what it means to be American. In his famed dishes, and now in this memoir, Marcus Samuelsson tells a story that reaches past racial and national divides to the foundations of family, hope, and downright good food."--President Bill Clinton