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

We Are the Weather

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."

For a Delicious Revolution

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."

The Water Dancer

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."

The One-Straw Revolution

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."

French Country Cooking

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."

Food Rules

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."

Unsavory Truth

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."

A Pattern Language

Christopher Alexander · 1977 · Buy on Amazon

"Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language is enormously important to me; I love the universality of that book."

The Physiology of Taste

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."

Braiding Sweetgrass

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."

The Shame of the Nation

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."

Suggest an update?