Here are 72 books that What I Ate in One Year fans have personally recommended if you like
What I Ate in One Year.
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I come from a huge Italian (and Irish) family and food was everything; tradition was everything. My mother was also passionate about health and wellness, devouring Prevention Magazine and working out to Jack LaLanne on a little black and white TV in the kitchen. She instilled a love of food in me that runs deep. At 26, diagnosed with terminal cancer, I chose food as my tool to regain my wellness. After recovering, I decided to study, gain knowledge (studying acupuncture and Chinese Medicine and getting my master's in food science and nutrition), and dedicate my life to helping others make their healthiest choices.
When this book came out, no one was talking about health like this. I was instantly in love with how easy it became to explain so much about the human body and wellness.
It was as though the authors had written a true ‘manual” on understanding this organism we live in and how to maximize wellness through food and lifestyle. I have read and use it so many times, it’s worn thin!
The #1 bestseller that gives YOU complete control over your body and your health
With new health studies and advice bombarding us every day, few people know much about what chugs, churns, and thumps throughout the miraculous system that is the human anatomy.
YOU: The Owner's Manual challenges preconceived notions about how the human body works and ages, and takes you on a fascinating grand tour of all your blood-pumping, food-digesting, and numbers-remembering systems and organs—including the heart, brain, lungs, immune system, bones, and sensory organs.
In this updated and expanded edition, America's favorite doctors, Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz,…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I come from a huge Italian (and Irish) family and food was everything; tradition was everything. My mother was also passionate about health and wellness, devouring Prevention Magazine and working out to Jack LaLanne on a little black and white TV in the kitchen. She instilled a love of food in me that runs deep. At 26, diagnosed with terminal cancer, I chose food as my tool to regain my wellness. After recovering, I decided to study, gain knowledge (studying acupuncture and Chinese Medicine and getting my master's in food science and nutrition), and dedicate my life to helping others make their healthiest choices.
I loved this book so much that I finished it and immediately started it over again! Growing up Italian, I could more than relate to what the author was writing about.
His passion for food, Italian living, and family touched every part of my heart. It was as though I was being shown a mirror of how I grew up, how my family cooked and ate, and how we interacted with each other. It was like watching a home movie of my life.
A Guardian book of the year A Times book of the year A Daily Mail book of the year
From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen. For Stanley and foodie fans, this is the perfect, irresistible gift.
'It's impossible to read this without becoming ravenous!' -- Nigella Lawson
'It is as infectious as it is delicious, as funny as it is insightful. The only reason to put this book down, is to go cook and eat from it' -- Heston…
I’ve been at least a part-time environmental journalist for more than 25 years, and food and agriculture is arguably the biggest environmental problem—the biggest driver of water shortages, water pollution, deforestation, and biodiversity loss, and the second-biggest driver (after fossil fuels) of climate change. And it occurred to me in 2019 that I didn’t know squat about it! I realized that if I was spectacularly ignorant, others probably were, too, and I’ve been obsessed ever since.
I think it gets a lot wrong about agriculture, and it’s responsible for a lot of romantic myths about what farms that will make it very difficult for us to eat less of the earth—starting with the idea that the environmental tragedy of agriculture was intensification (chemicals and other modern practices that allowed farmers to grow more food per acre) rather than extensification (the transformation of nature into agriculture as farmers use more acres to grow food).
But Pollan is a beautiful writer, and he identified many real problems with industrial agriculture; there’s a reason his book has inspired so many not-nearly-as-compelling copycat books about regenerative agriculture.
What shall we have for dinner? Such a simple question has grown to have a very complicated answer. We can eat almost anything nature has to offer, but deciding what we should eat stirs anxiety. Should we choose the organic apple or the conventional? If organic, local or imported? Wild fish or farmed? Low-carb or low-cal? As the American culture of fast food and unlimited choice invades the world, Pollan follows his next meal from land to table, tracing the origin of everything consumed and the implications for ourselves and our planet. His astonishing findings will shock all who care…
Separating the true stories from the myths, The Duty of Memory provides a deeper understanding of the diverse motivations that drove ordinary people to join an underground network of French Resistants despite terrible odds and horrifying consequences.
This book takes the reader inside the true story of men and women…
I come from a huge Italian (and Irish) family and food was everything; tradition was everything. My mother was also passionate about health and wellness, devouring Prevention Magazine and working out to Jack LaLanne on a little black and white TV in the kitchen. She instilled a love of food in me that runs deep. At 26, diagnosed with terminal cancer, I chose food as my tool to regain my wellness. After recovering, I decided to study, gain knowledge (studying acupuncture and Chinese Medicine and getting my master's in food science and nutrition), and dedicate my life to helping others make their healthiest choices.
This is one of the most important classics of Taoism and the book that put my feet on the path I now follow in terms of food and wellness. The highest authority on traditional Chinese medicine. Its authorship is attributed to the great Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor, who reigned during the third millennium BCE.
This book has proven invaluable to me in my work. All of the topics are discussed in a holistic context that says life is not fragmented, as in the model provided by modern science, but rather that all the pieces make up an interconnected whole. I love this book.
The Neijing is one of the most important classics of Taoism, as well as the highest authority on traditional Chinese medicine. Its authorship is attributed to the great Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor, who reigned during the third millennium BCE. This new translation consists of the eighty-one chapters of the section of the Neijing known as the Suwen, or "Questions of Organic and Fundamental Nature." (The other section, called the Lingshu, is a technical book on acupuncture and is not included here.)
Written in the form of a discourse between Huang Di and his ministers, The Yellow Emperor's Classic of…
I went to Paris the first time when I was nineteen. I was sitting in a cheap restaurant when a man entered carrying a burlap sack filled with escargots, and put some on my plate (all very unsanitary) for me to taste. Delicious! I was in France in the 1970s when Robert Parker was discovering French wine. (We didn’t meet then, but did after my series was published many years later.) Subsequent stays in Paris and other areas of France (Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy) afforded me a food and wine sensibility that over decades has permeated my lifestyle, my friendships—and my writing.
This was a gift from a friend, and I absolutely love it. From the jacket copy: “It is the riveting portrait of a gay man struggling to overcome the reverberating shame and guilt of a long-buried childhood secret.” On the very first page he includes his ode to a sandwich, written when he was a child. It starts: "The BLT is the most perfect sandwich. The bacon brings it salt and the rich taste of pork. The tomato is sweet and juicy…” Labrano eventually became a famous food critic, and his memoir is peppered with fabulous descriptions of food and wine. His description of a dinner in Val-les-Bains in the Ardèche region of France is downright inspiring. A great read!
In this debut memoir, a James Beard Award-winning writer, whose childhood idea of fine dining was Howard Johnson's, tells how he became one of Paris's most influential food critics
Until Alec Lobrano landed a job in the glamorous Paris office of Women's Wear Daily, his main experience of French cuisine was the occasional supermarket eclair. An interview with the owner of a renowned cheese shop for his first article nearly proves a disaster because he speaks no French. As he goes on to cover celebrities and couturiers and improves his mastery of the language, he gradually learns what it means…
My interest in serial killers began when I was a teen watching horror movies with my mom. I learned all I could about them—even became a horror special-effects makeup artist. Eventually, I had to quit due to my connective tissue disorder (Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome). It put me on a path of writing. I love digging into the darker side of humanity—murder or mental illness. The story of a serial killer who could challenge the reader to see disability in a new light came to me, and I had to write her story, if not just so I could dive into the psyche of another serial killer.
An engrossing read about a food critic’s life, bumpy career, and murders. There is death and consumption, sex and violence; there is depravity in the mundane. Sometimes voices sparkle, others pop off the page, and then there is Chelsea G. Summer’s Dorothy Daniels. She dug into my brain and picked at it like a scab. From the first page, Summers hooked me on a razor-sharp fishing line. Dorothy recounts stories like an old friend would—if your old friend would describe killing a man and her vagina in equal parts disturbing and eloquent language. There was disgust but also a sense of empowerment. I wanted all of her dirty little secrets. And oh, does Dorothy love to talk.
One of Vanity Fair's Books That Will Get You Through This Winter “One of the most uniquely fun and campily gory books in my recent memory... A Certain Hunger has the voice of a hard-boiled detective novel, as if metaphor-happy Raymond Chandler handed the reins over to the sexed-up femme fatale and really let her fly." ―The New York Times
Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy’s clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any…
What were America's first prisons like? How did penal reformers, prison administrators, and politicians deal with the challenges of confining human beings in long-term captivity as punishment--what they saw as a humane intervention?
The Deviant Prison centers on one early prison: Eastern State Penitentiary. Built in Philadelphia, one of the…
I wrote my first mystery in second grade, thinking I was writing a page-turning thriller when in reality I penned a sweet, little cozy where everything turns out okay in the end and everyone always has a cup of hot chocolate and a vanilla cookie in hand. Somehow, I’ve managed to turn my love of baking and writing into a long-term career. With over 30 mysteries and counting I’m not sure if I’m going to run out of recipes or ways to kill someone off first.
This sweet gem is like a salve for any food-loving reader’s soul. I devoured it on a stormy weekend, curled up on my couch with a cup of tea and it has stayed with me ever since. The story is set in the 1960s and written entirely in letters between an aspiring food writer in LA and a food columnist in the Puget Sound. Who knew that you couldn’t find garlic in the grocery store back in the 60s or that a simple gift of saffron would lead to a lasting friendship. Love & Saffron is a tender novel about friendship and how food connects us. I have literally given this book to all of my friends. It will warm your heart and leave you hungry for more.
The Instant National Bestseller and #1 Indie Next Pick
In the vein of the classic 84, Charing Cross Road, this witty and tender novel follows two women in 1960s America as they discover that food really does connect us all, and that friendship and laughter are the best medicine.
When twenty-seven-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter--as well as a gift of saffron--to fifty-nine-year-old Imogen Fortier, a life-changing friendship begins. Joan lives in Los Angeles and is just starting out as a writer for the newspaper food pages. Imogen lives on Camano Island outside Seattle, writing a monthly column…
As a writer, wife, and mom, I love reading novels and memoirs about women who are navigating parenting, relationships, and careers simultaneously. My favorites are those that make me laugh out loud while presenting a relatable picture of all this juggling act entails. Smart and witty heroines who approach life with a can-do spirit and the ability to laugh at themselves as the world tosses one curveball after another their way capture my heart every time.
It’s hard to match Nora Ephron’s wit and wisdom. In this novel, which mirrors events from the novelist and screenwriter’s real life, cookbook writer Rachel Samstat learns that her husband is cheating on her while she’s pregnant. Even as her life is falling apart, Rachel maintains her sense of humor while dropping the “everything is perfect” routine and speaking her mind.
In this tale of love and loss, Ephron serves up hilarious and heartbreaking moments in equal portions alongside mouthwatering recipes.
If I had to do it over again, I would have made a different kind of pie. The pie I threw at Mark made a terrific mess, but a blueberry pie would have been even better, since it would have permanently ruined his new blazer, the one he bought with Thelma ... I picked up the pie, thanked God for linoleum floor, and threw it' Rachel Samstat is smart, successful, married to a high-flying Washington journalist... and devastated. She has discovered that her husband is having an affair with Thelma Rice, 'a fairly tall person with a neck as long…
I started out as a religion major in college, but soon became frustrated with the abstract thoughts of privileged white males. I wanted to understand the passions and struggles of ordinary people, and soon became convinced that the examination of the distant past sheds important light on the present. It’s not that I don’t care about the world around me right now. Rather, I am convinced that those who look only at this decade, this century, or even the last century fail to recognize some of the most powerful cultural forces that have shaped our most fundamental understandings of gender, wealth, poverty, work, and so much more.
Looking back across six decades, MFK Fisher, one of the most astute and evocative travel and gastronomical authors ever to put pen to paper, recalls the year when everything for her was new: France, Europe, marriage, food, culture. Based in provincial Dijon, Mary studied French, shopped in the open markets, learned to cook, and jotted down astute observations concerning everyone she met, while her husband wrote his dissertation. My first encounter with Tours, in 1979, reminds me of Fisher’s encounter with Dijon in 1929. Like her, I was warmed by the joy of discovery, the sense that every stone and leaf, every living thing that I encountered had layers upon layers of meaning, and it was my job to uncover some of them, revealing meanings that no one had seen before.
In 1929, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher arrived in Dijon, the provincial capital of Burgundy and the gastronomical capital of France, there to be initiated into the ways of love and life.
Long Ago in France is Fisher's exquisitely evocative, deliciously candid memoir of her three-year stay in Dijon. It is a delightful journey backward - in the grandest of company - into a voluptuous, genteel world that has vanished forever.
Pioneer Paddles of the Colonial South
by
William D. Auman,
Award-winning novelist William Auman, author of If Trees Could Testify..., takes the reader on a time-traveling odyssey featuring 345 bodies of water in six states within the historical context through which they unfold.
Journey into remaining Colonial-era wilderness with stories of pirate treasure, epic frontiersmen, Indigenous Peoples, and Revolutionary…
As a longtime host of The Moth, I know the power of personal storytelling. During the early days of the pandemic, I decided to write down all my favorite family stories so my kids would always have them. But how? I knew I didn’t want to write it chronologically or as a series of separate stories. After months of experimenting, I stumbled upon a format that let me pick and choose which stories I wanted to tell but also weave disparate family members together. I was greatly inspired by the books on this list, and I hope you are too!
I haven’t read this book for over a decade, but there are still stories I know by heart and tell friends. When food critic Ruth Reichl boards a plane to take the job as the New York Times food critic, the woman sitting next to her recognizes her.
There’s a picture of Ruth in the kitchen of the restaurant where she works, and the first person to spot her come in gets a $500 spot bonus. Realizing she’ll never get an honest experience as herself, Ruth works with a costume and hair and make-up team to create a series of characters so she can dine at New York’s finest restaurants incognito.
This book is so much fun to read and a great example of how to tell just part of your story, in this case, about two year’s worth, and save the rest of your life for other books.
Author of Save Me the Plums Ruth Reichl’s iconic, bestselling memoir of her time as an undercover restaurant critic for The New York Times
"Expansive and funny." —Entertainment Weekly
Ruth Reichl, world-renowned food critic and former editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, knows a thing or two about food. She also knows that as the most important food critic in the country, you need to be anonymous when reviewing some of the most high-profile establishments in the biggest restaurant town in the world—a charge she took very seriously, taking on the guise of a series of eccentric personalities. In Garlic…
