Synopses & Reviews
The rollicking biography of Clementine Paddleford: aa go- anywhere, taste-anything, ask-everything kind of reporter who traveled more than 50,000 miles a year in search of stories. . . . matched as a regional-food pioneer only by James Beard.a (R. W. Apple, Jr., The New York Times)
In Hometown Appetites, an award-winning food writer and a leading university archivist come together to revive the legacy of the most important food writer you have never heard of. Clementine Paddleford was a Kansas farm girl who grew up to chronicle Americaas culinary habits. Her weekly readership at the New York Herald Tribune topped 12 million during the 1950s and 1960s and she earned a salary of $250,000. Yet twenty years after aAmericaas bestknown food editora passed away, she had been forgottena until now.
At a time when few women worked outside the home, Paddleford flew her own Piper Cub to meet her readers and find out what was for dinner. Before Paddleford, newspaper food sections were dull primers on home economy. But she changed all of that, composing her own brand of sassy, unerringly authoritative prose designed to celebrate regional home cooking. Her magnum opus, a book called How America Eats, published in 1960, reveals an appetite for life that was insatiable. This book restores Paddlefordas name where it belongs: in the pantheon alongside those of James Beard and Julia Child. Itas a five-star read in the spirit of national bestsellers such as Heat and The United States of Arugula,
Review
Selected as one of the 2009 Kansas Notable Books In "Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris's smartly drawn, surprisingly uplifting biography [...] the authors share Paddleford's eye for a good story, deftly documenting their subject's well-deserved contributions to food journalism, but balancing them with biographical color."
-New York Post
"Alexander and Harris paint an affectionate portrait of the eccentric writer, an ebullient yet imposing individualist and charismatic adventurer...Rich, flavorful and spirited, like its subject and the cuisines she chronicled."
-Kirkus
"At long last, an enthusiastic, significant rehabilitation of Paddleford's career as food writer from 1936 to 1966 at the New York Herald Tribune...The authors make an upbeat case for reconsidering Paddleford's achievement in this enjoyable read, and include a slew of her comfort recipes."
-Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
An award-winning food writer and a university archivist come together to revive the legacy of Clementine Paddleford, a go-anywhere, taste-anything, ask-everything kind of reporter, who traveled more than 50,000 miles a year in search of [food] stories ("The New York Times"). Two 8-page b&w inserts.
Synopsis
A rollicking biography of a pioneering American woman and one of our greatest culinary figures In Hometown Appetites, Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris come together to revive the legacy of the most important food writer you have never heard of. Clementine Paddleford was a Kansas farm girl who grew up to chronicle America?s culinary habits. Her weekly readership at the New York Herald Tribune topped 12 million during the 1950s and 1960s and she earned a salary of $250,000. Yet twenty years after ?America?s best-known food editor? passed away, she had been forgotten?until now.
Before Paddleford, newspaper food sections were dull primers on home economy. But she changed all of that, composing her own brand of sassy, unerringly authoritative prose designed to celebrate regional home cooking. This book restores Paddleford?s name where it belongs: in the pantheon alongside greats like James Beard and Julia Child.
About the Author
Kelly Alexander is a food writer and was a longtime editor at Saveur magazine. She has won the James Beard Journalism Award. Cynthia Harris is the manuscript/collections archivist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, and the leading authority on the Paddleford archive.