Promotional Information

From the legendary editor who helped shape modern cookbook publishing-one of the food world's most admired figures-comes this evocative and inspiring memoir.

About the Author

Judith Jones is Senior Editor and Vice President at Alfred A. Knopf. She joined the company in 1957 as an editor working primarily on translations of French writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. She had worked before that for Doubleday, first in New York and then in Paris, where she was responsible for reading and recommending The Diary of Anne Frank. In addition to her literary authors, she has been particularly interested in developing a list of first-rate cookbook writers; her authors have included Julia Child (Judith published Julia's first book and was her editor ever after), Lidia Bastianich, James Beard, Marion Cunningham, Rosie Daley, Marcella Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey, Edna Lewis, Scott Peacock, Joan Nathan, Jacques Pepin, Claudia Roden, and Nina Simonds. She is the coauthor with Evan Jones (her late husband) of two books- The Book of Bread- Knead It, Punch It, Bake It! (for children); and The Book of New New England Cookery. She also collaborated with Angus Cameron on The L.L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook. Recently, she has contributed to Vogue, Saveur, and Gourmet magazines. In 2006, she was awarded the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.

Reviews

“Lovely, elegant, and passionate.”—Newsday “Engaging. . . . [Jones's] refined gourmandise is present on every page.”—The Washington Post “Lovely. . . . A rare glimpse into the roots of the modern culinary world.”—Chicago Tribune “Engrossing. . . . The Tenth Muse lets you pull up a chair at the table where American gastronomic history took place.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

"Lovely, elegant, and passionate."-Newsday "Engaging. . . . [Jones's] refined gourmandise is present on every page."-The Washington Post "Lovely. . . . A rare glimpse into the roots of the modern culinary world."-Chicago Tribune "Engrossing. . . . The Tenth Muse lets you pull up a chair at the table where American gastronomic history took place."-O, The Oprah Magazine

The title of this testament to one woman's appetite comes from Brillat-Savarin, who wrote of a 10th muse-Gasterea, goddess of the pleasures of taste. Many food writers would argue that this 10th muse is actually Judith Jones. For nearly half a century, Jones, an editor of literary fiction and a senior vice-president at Knopf, has served as midwife to some of the most culturally significant cookbooks of our time, introducing readers to newly discovered talents like Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey and Claudia Roden, to name but a few. In this quiet, spare memoir, set against the shifting landscape of modern cookery in America, Jones reveals herself to be every bit as evangelical about good food and honest cooking as her authors, locating the points where her relationships with these writer-gastronomes and her own gustatory education converged. She ran an illegal restaurant in Paris, learned from Julia Child to de-tendon a goose (a set of maneuvers involving a broomstick), received a tutorial in fresh-bagged squirrel from Edna Lewis and counted James Beard among her mentors. At the end, the book is tinged with sadness over the decline of serious home cooking and the current fixation on dishing up fast and easy mediocrities. But Jones's belief in the primordial importance of cooking well is ultimately inspiring, and it fires these pages as it has fired her life. (Oct.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.