Alice Waters's Reading List
The chef and restaurateur, whose new book is “We Are What We Eat,” was heavily influenced by Elizabeth David’s book “French Country Cooking”: ‘All I wanted to do was live like the French.’
Open in WellRead Daily app →By the Book: Alice Waters (2021)
NYT By the Book column (2021-06-03).
Source: www.nytimes.com
Jonathan Safran Foer · Buy on Amazon
"I can really identify with what he's saying — like he's talking to me in person, trying to get down to very basic questions about why we eat what we eat."
Olivier Roellinger · Buy on Amazon
"It's a memoir, very easy to read, but beautifully written and heartfelt. He grew up in France and talks about food there."
Ta-Nehisi Coates · Buy on Amazon
"He is an amazing writer; I feel like I'm right there in it with him. I want to feel that way the moment I open a book."
Masanobu Fukuoka · Buy on Amazon
"My friend Steve Crumley gave me the book in the 1970s, and I read it cover to cover. Fukuoka was so important in his time: He influenced all the radical thinkers about food."
Elizabeth David · Buy on Amazon
"I got it in my early 20s. Elizabeth David had also gone to France, and also fallen in love with the markets and the way that the French lived to eat."
Michael Pollan · Buy on Amazon
"Michael Pollan's edition of Food Rules that's illustrated by Maira Kalman — two of my all-time favorites, collaborating together."
Marion Nestle · Buy on Amazon
"That made me absolutely furious. The title of the book says it all. And I'm so grateful to Marion for telling the truth."
Christopher Alexander · 1977 · Buy on Amazon
"Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language is enormously important to me; I love the universality of that book."
Brillat-Savarin · Buy on Amazon
"Here is the first line of it: The universe would be nothing were it not for life, and all that lives must be fed."
Robin Wall Kimmerer · Buy on Amazon
"I just starting it, but I love the emerging thesis that we've been told the wrong stories about our relationship to nature."
Jonathan Kozol · Buy on Amazon
"I want Jonathan Kozol to republish The Shame of the Nation. What a great title. And it is a shame on the nation."
Favorite books (2023)
Favorite books recommended by Alice Waters, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/alice-waters-favorite-books/.
Source: radicalreads.com
Richard Olney · Buy on Amazon
"Olney is one of the great recipe writers, because all of his recipes work. He was a painter, and channels that vivid language into make his recipes come to life on the page."
Elizabeth David · Buy on Amazon
"I was very lucky that someone gave me this as my first cookbook. David doesn’t give a lot in terms of the recipes – ‘take a handful and throw it in the pan with some garlic’ – so you have to think for yourself. And then you figure it out."
Elisabeth Luard · Buy on Amazon
"Worth it for the pictures alone – people celebrating the important moments of their lives. There’s an Indian banquet where everyone is eating off of leaves, sitting on the floor. One of these days, I’m going to thrown an event like that."
Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein · Buy on Amazon
"Who needs a big place to live in? You need a front porch, you need a busy street, you need neighbors to say hello and goodnight to, and you need a bedroom to restore yourself. This is a book you can open on any page. You might find a drawing of the narrow streets of Ethiopia, or a chapter titled, ‘Dancing in the Streets’, which is something people have done forever."
Eric Schlosser (also rec’d by Richard Branson & Yoko Ono ) · Buy on Amazon
"I like to tell the good news. Schlosser tells the bad news. Sometimes it just needs to be said."
Jean Giono · Buy on Amazon
"This book is so hopeful that I gave it to Obama. It feels so naive that it almost reads like a children’s book, but it’s something I believe – that you can change the world by planting trees."
Maira Kalman · Buy on Amazon
"I love Maira. She is always talking about this country and how we behave, and looking for the good news. This book is incredibly important to me because it’s about Thomas Jefferson and our founding fathers, and how she kind of found them."
Jonathan Kozol · Buy on Amazon
"A book that shocked me – that there are schools that flood in the winter, that kids have to put on their boots to cross the campus to use restrooms – and it’s even worse now."
Wendell Berry · Buy on Amazon
"Berry puts that stake in the ground. He’s a poet as well as a wonderful writer, and his message is simple: Nature is our teacher. We just need to listen and feel it, and try not to get in its way."
Carlo Petrini · Buy on Amazon
"Petrini knows how to win people over, and he’s a writer who translates difficult ideas about biodiversity and sustainability into metaphors that readers can understand right away."