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Book Summary and Reviews of Dearie by Bob Spitz

Dearie by Bob Spitz

Dearie

The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

by Bob Spitz

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  • Published:
  • Aug 2012, 576 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

It’s rare for someone to emerge in America who can change our attitudes, our beliefs, and our very culture. It’s even rarer when that someone is a middle-aged, six-foot three-inch woman whose first exposure to an unsuspecting public is cooking an omelet on a hot plate on a local TV station.  And yet, that's exactly what Julia Child did.  The warble-voiced doyenne of television cookery became an iconic cult figure and joyous rule-breaker as she touched off the food revolution that has gripped America for more than fifty years.

Now, in Bob Spitz's definitive, wonderfully affectionate biography, the Julia we know and love comes vividly - and surprisingly - to life.  In Dearie, Spitz employs the same skill he brought to his best-selling, critically acclaimed book The Beatles, providing a clear-eyed portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential Americans of our time - a woman known to all, yet known by only a few.

At its heart, Dearie is a story about a woman's search for her own unique expression.  Julia Child was a directionless, gawky young woman who ran off halfway around the world to join a spy agency during World War II.  She eventually settled in Paris, where she learned to cook and collaborated on the writing of what would become Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a book that changed the food culture of America.   She was already fifty when The French Chef went on the air -  at a time in our history when women weren't making those leaps.  Julia became the first educational TV star, virtually launching PBS as we know it today; her marriage to Paul Child formed a decades-long love story that was romantic, touching, and quite extraordinary.

A fearless, ambitious, supremely confident woman, Julia took on all the pretensions that embellished tony French cuisine and fricasseed them to a fare-thee-well, paving the way for everything that has happened since in American cooking, from TV dinners and Big Macs to sea urchin foam and the Food Channel.  Julia Child's story, however, is more than the tale of a talented woman and her sumptuous craft.  It is also a saga of America's coming of age and growing sophistication, from the Depression Era to the turbulent sixties and the excesses of the eighties to the greening of the American kitchen.  Julia had an effect on and was equally affected by the baby boom, the sexual revolution, and the start of the women’s liberation movement.

On the centenary of her birth, Julia finally gets the biography she richly deserves.  An in-depth, intimate narrative, full of fresh information and insights, Dearie is an entertaining, all-out adventure story of one of our most fascinating and beloved figures.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review... Released to coincide with Child's centenary, Spitz's delightful biography succeeds in being as big as its subject." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. Spitz captures another side of [Julia’s] complex personality: her fierce diligence in mastering the science as well as the art of cooking through detailed experimentation and her concern to translate the preparation of complex French recipes for readers in America ... An engrossing biography of a woman worthy of iconic status." - Kirkus Review

"It’s a revelation." - Time Magazine

"A biography perfectly suited to its subject - as lively, fascinating, and singular as Julia Child herself." - Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

This information about Dearie was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Elizabeth Kretchmer

A Wonderful Biography of Julia Child!
I thoroughly reading this Biography about Julia Child as she was a fan growing up. Bob Spitz clearly depicted a wonderful story of Julia's life, her adventures and love for food.

This was truly a joy to read!

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Author Information

Bob Spitz

Bob Spitz is the award-winning author of The Beatles, a New York Times best seller, as well as seven other nonfiction books and a screenplay. He has represented Bruce Springsteen and Elton John in several capacities. His articles appear regularly in magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times Magazine; The Washington Post; Rolling Stone; and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others.

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