Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days (with Recipes)

For instance:

• The menu on the Titanic on the fatal night

• Reflections on dining from Queen Victoria, JFK, Winnie-the-Pooh, Garrison Keillor, and many others

• The seductiveness of a velvety Brie or the perfect martini

• How to decide whom to invite to a dinner party—and whom not to

• John Irving's family recipe for meatballs; Balzac's love of coffee

• The greatest dinner ever given at the White House

• Where in Paris Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter had French onion soup at 4:00 a.m.

• How to cope with acts of God and man-made disasters in the kitchen

Sophisticated as well as practical, opinionated, and indispensable, Life Is Meals is a tribute to the glory of food and drink, and the joy of sharing them with others. "The meal is the emblem of civilization," the Salters observe. "What would one know of life as it should be lived, or nights as they should be spent, apart from meals?"


BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James Salter's All That Is.