Thomas McNameeReseñas

I'm going almost the full five stars on this because it's the best cat book I've read to date. I've not read a ton, to be honest, but McNamee manages to capture both the science and the essence of the relationship between a cat and its owner. He is undoubtedly a man coming at the subject with heartfelt appreciation and love for our feline overlords and his advice is rational, sound and passionate.

I learned a lot from this book. I never knew that the sticking out of the tongue was a sign of friendship and acceptance; I always thought Easter-cat just left her tongue sticking out sometimes. The front leg stretch isn't really a stretch, so much as it's a gesture of acceptance and friendship. McNamee has me a little stressed out about Easter-cat's insistence on only eating dry food. Small things like that, as well as much bigger issues like separation anxiety have given me much to think about.

McNamee also talks about a lot of very sticky issues, especially regarding breeding, the cat's need to hunt, and the feral population problem that plagues communities around the world. His overview of how Italy - specifically Rome - is tackling the issue is an inspiration, if not a complete solution. I think he does a phenomenal job bringing home the basic idea that cats (and any pet for that matter) are not merely personal possessions or accessories; they are living creatures with as much right to quality of life and dignity as we might and arrogant humans so.

This book is a weaving of science and personal anecdotes about the author's cat, Augusta. Those personal parts are brilliant, and sometimes nail-biting. Full disclosure: I flat-out skipped chapter 7 on sickness and death. I'm a sissy, and the first 6 chapters convinced me that McNamee was going to write chapter 7 with at least as much passion and heartfelt sincerity and there aren't enough tissues in the world to get me through that chapter.

I knocked off half a star because some figures at the start seemed to fantastical to be true, and though there is a notes section at the back, those figures weren't cited, leaving me and others feeling distrustful of the data. Otherwise, I thought this was a brilliantly written, fantastic resource for anybody who wants to be a better cat slave.½

This book was less about the inner lives of cats, or the science and secrets of cats than an ode and memoir about the author's cat, Augusta. The science bits were interesting though some of the numbers quoted lack a reference and make verification difficult. There were also many interesting sections on feral cats in Rome, sensory input and raising kittens and the semi-domestic nature of cats, as well as the stupidity of humans who keep wild animals in their homes and are surprised when it eats them or shreds the house. The majority of the book involves stories about Augusta. Sometimes these stories tied in with the more informative parts of the book, sometimes they didn't. I haven't lived with a cat for years, so I'm not as inclined as cat-owners to go all soppy over the Augusta sections (maybe if Augusta was a German Shepherd it might have been different), but I did find the book entertaining and well-written though lacking in science.
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OTHER BOOKS:

-The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World by Abigail Tucker

- Furry Logic: The Physics of Animal Life by Matin Durrani & Liz Kalaugher

- Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World by Richard C. Francis

Some people think that the story of his cat Augusta detracts from the factual aspects of the book, but I think it's what keeps the book from getting too dry. And believe you me, there is nothing dry about the last chapter or two. It is kind of like Marley and Me in that way, but even more so for me because I'm a cat person. It also doesn't help that my beloved Sweetpea, 16 years old, has been diagnosed with cancer.

Whereas I read the end of Marley and Me on a plane, crying like a baby while some stranger had to sit next to me, I read the end of this book at home and had access to a lot of tissues and a cat to cuddle. I recommend the latter!

I enjoyed McNamee's book and encountered quite a bit of new information about the problem of feral cats and cat communication and vocalization. However, the book is generally not about what the title claims that it is: the inner life of cats. There is also some information presented that seems unnecessarily obvious: what to do if your cat goes missing, for example. Prospective readers who have recently lost a beloved animal should also be advised that McNamee describes the decline and euthanasia of his longtime feline companion, Augusta, in a fair bit of detail.

Although it is largely expository, The Inner Life of Cats does contain engaging memoir elements. McNamee tells us the story of Augusta, who was abandoned as a three-month-old kitten on a road near his Montana ranch. I mostly enjoyed reading about Augusta's adventures, and I certainly understand the author's desire to give her an enriched life of outdoor freedom, though it is not what I would choose to do. However, I have to say I was very uncomfortable with his decision to let Augusta out of doors when he and his wife moved to San Francisco. To give McNamee his due, he does discuss the many dangers of a cat's being allowed out of doors (along with the challenges of keeping a cat entirely indoors). Oddly, however, he omits any discussion of the possibility that a cat can acquire F.I.V.--the feline equivalent of H.I.V.--often contracted in territorial disputes by male cats from bites by infected toms.

A quibble of mine: McNamee's references to feline nutrition are quite superficial. He appears to suggest that because the American Association of Feed Control Officials identifies nutritional requirements for cat food, it somehow oversees pet food production and ensures the quality of commercial foods. It does not, and neither does the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In fact, according to Susan Thixton, "The United States Department of Agriculture has no regulatory authority over pet food. The USDA does have a voluntary pet food certification program, but it is not acknowledged by FDA or State Department of Agriculture." Pet food is poorly regulated indeed, and poor diet is linked with a number of modern feline medical problems, including inflammatory bowel disease and hyperthyroidism. Interested readers may wish to visit Thixton's Truth about Pet Food website for more information.

For all their grace and beauty, cats have small brains and it is tempting to think that their cognition isn't all that sharp. Thomas McNamee carefully considers the scientific evidence as well as his own interactions with his beloved rescue cat Augusta and comes to the conclusion that cats' emotional lives are rich and deeply complex. Readers who live with cats won't be surprised by this revelation. Nonetheless, this book is a beautifully written tribute to cats everywhere.

This DVD is wonderful for everyone who wants to learn and experience Calder's art. It includes mobiles in motion and the architectural stabiles. Calder was able to sculpt metal into living objects. Most mobiles in museums drift around lazily but this DVD includes faster motor powered mobiles and faster moving mobiles that can't be sustained in a museum without breaking.

The interviewees are a nice variety of critics, historians, gallery owners, fellow artists, friends, and family. It is slightly out dated, I believe it was filmed in the 90's but the information is still relevant.

I purchased in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC but it could be found on the internet and it could be on Netflix. There are also more documentaries Alexander Calder that could be interesting.

I won this book as a Goodreads first reader. I enjoyed this book. A well written story about a man who really had an impact on American food. If you love food, this is a book for you.

So great to read this book. Lots of insight into the restaurant I know so much about from a very different perspective. I loved learning about its messy, disorganized history, and seeing how it all came together.

Claiborne is rightly known for his role as The New York Times' revered food and restaurant critic of the 1950's and 1960's. It was interesting to learn of his background and the circles in which he traveled. Nevertheless, I believe this book tries to credit Claiborne with far more influence and importance than necessary. The NYT at the time was not the national newspaper it was today, and his writing did not reach as many cooks, chefs and readers as he would today. I also found much of the armchair psychology to be unfortunate. Nevertheless, an interesting read overall of a particular era in American culinary history.

Okay, I admit I sped read through the last chapters, because after a while the saga of Chez Panisse and Alice Waters becomes the same story over and over again: Great Idea! Passion! Disaster! Revival! New People Just in Time! and so on.

But for a while it was fascinating at many levels: gossip, the sheer bravado of opening a restaurant with extraordinary (and often strange) concepts, the details of people coming and going and menus and recipes (recipes given in a prose recording of "well, then you take the butter, not too much, mind, and you go and get some of those radishes that we planted last week, the baby ones, wash off the grit, and then go grab the baby lamb and the knife..." sort of way). And the business details-- well, there aren't many in true business sense, but it is a tale of not being stopped by silly things like limited cash. Or fire.

Baby lamb brings up one of my problems with many a culinary book, which is that as a vegetarian I do start to shudder at the detailed pages on things like blue trout and baby lambkins. But that's just my problem.

Alice has been majorly influential, at least here on the left coast. Fun to read.

Growing up in the 50's and learning to cook meant opening cans of green beans, frying chicken or chops, or using the oven for roasts on Sundays. It was all done to get the family fed with no thought to food as pleasure. Reading author Thomas McNamee's biography of Craig Claiborne takes us on a culinary trip, not with recipes, but with a history of the American food revolution beginning in 1957. So many things we now take for granted were introduced by Claiborne, such as creme fraiche, balsamic vinegar, Chef's knives and even the salad spinner.

Unknown to most of us was the part that Claiborne played in the careers of such chefs as Julia Child, Paul Bocuse, ,Paul Prudhomme,Diana Kennedy and Jacques Pepin. Claiborne was a loner, living his entire life in solitude, having gay lovers but living an inner life of conflict and self-doubt. The author has given us an outstanding story, painstakingly researched and presented in a very readable biography.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in culinary history, food or just to enjoy an engrossing story. Craig Claiborne finally will be known, as he was not ever known during his extra ordinary life. A great gift book, for yourself and also for friends and relatives who will enjoy a different ad entertaining approach to food.

This was a fascinating book. My friends consider me a "foodie", though I don't agree. I love to eat at nice restaurants, try new dishes, and experiment with my cooking club. None of those things however make me a true "foodie". I am just not that knowledgeable. Craig Claiborne was a "foodie", perhaps the first in our country, and he brought a desire for that knowledge to a large percentage of people just like me. I never read one of Claiborne's columns but had I, I would have been one of his devoted followers. Learning about the life and career of such a man was a wonderful discovery for me.

McNamee makes Claiborne come alive. As I was reading the book I found myself making the journey with Claiborne and wishing that I was more than just a voyeur. I wanted to be a part of the lavish dinner parties, on the trips to Europe to explore the newest restaurants, and to have written some of the amazing cookbooks which carry the Claiborn byline.

However, as is true with anyone, Claiborne was not just his public persona. He had an unseen, and for that time period, scandalous personal life. He lived with the same demons a lot of us do and had the same character flaws too. This does not distract from the persona of Claiborne but serves to make him someone that more of us can relate to.

If you are interested in food at all I think that this biography is definitely worth the time to read. I not only learned a lot about the food revolution in America but I was left with a respect for what it took to make it come about, not to mention a compelling need to go out and buy The New York Times Cookbook.

Really this is a biography of two things: the woman and the restaurant. This book does an excellent job of describing how the two have influenced each other. It also wonderfully portrays their shared aesthetic, a sense of taste that is not just in the food, but in everything.

A bio of both the famous restaurant in Berkeley and it's founder, sometime chef and public face of Waters.

It begins with Waters' childhood and I really thought that there was no need to go back quite that far, but as you go through her college years and the beginnings of her interest in food, and the fact that her father figures into the later success of the restaurant, it makes sense to have the background.

Chez Panisse has repeatedly been voted the best restaurant in America, but its rise happened slowly and in a way that probably wouldn't happen these days. Who could get away with being backed by drug dealers? And the success happened despite Waters' utter lack of business skills, and her confusing desire to attend the Sorbonne, to cook for her friends, to open a restaurant, but not to be the chef. I found it really strange that she built her life around food and held the title of chef while avoiding the actual cooking most of the time. Which brings up another thing about the book; I thought it would be a kind portrait of Waters and for the most part it is. But about halfway through McNamee begins showing cracks in the Panisse family and it gives a more realistic view of what it's like to have had such a group effort that benefits one person more than the others.

This well-put-together book follows a petite child of the 60s - present at the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley - to her current status as the epitome of California - no, American - cuisine. Everyone who is at all interested in food knows Alice Waters, and this is her story. It is also the story of her restaurant, Chez Panisse. But it turns out that the restaurant is but a launching pad for Alice's global movement of cultivating and consuming fresh, local and mostly organic food.

Yes, a lot of time is spent on menus and preparation of the food at Chez Panisse, but it was just this careful, innovative and obsessive work that brought attention to Alice. Using that attention, she seeks, near the end of the book (taking her to age 62), to change the way the world eats.

The business of restaurants (not Alice's strong point) is examined, and the pivoting of Chez Panisse around its varied chefs over 35 years (Alice was rarely one) is well descirbed. Photographs of all the important folks in the story, and sidebars of recipes and cooking techniques, make the book a very attractive one, as does its Calfornia Craftsman style design.

I've got to hand it to McNamee: Not only did he make a lovely sense out of the lovely disorder going on at Chez Panisse, he carefully crafts the depiction of Alice Waters, so as to capture all facets of this prism personality. In the late 1960's, Waters, an admitted Francophile and dreamer, opens up the Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, where she could serve the kind of food that she ate while in France, the idea of food that she had been chasing ever since returning to the U.S.

The early history on Waters is brief, and very fittingly so, because this is not a woman whose childhood seems like an improbable notion. Even into her old age, Waters bears a whimsical presence on the restaurant she founded, on her family, friends, colleagues, students, and business partners, on her fans and devoted followers, and this whimsy is fueled by a residing childlike notion of purity, cleanness, simplicity.

It's also fitting, then, that the bulk of the background behaviors at Chez Panisse could be described in opposing terms. In lesser work, the personalities and presences of so many people coming and going would read as an impassable blur, a messy, ill-defined group of misfits, romantics, artists, cooks, outlaws, etc. But McNamee's patience is well utilized. He handles each kitchen personality with careful character crafting, following their story to the very end of their time at the restaurant, and many of them long after. He sketches such clear pictures of the supporting players, that they stick with you throughout the entire history, much like their actual presence in Alice Waters's life.

The ultimate achievement of this book is that it accessibly relates the story of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse without sacrificing the spirit of mercurial disarray and sentimental disaster. The reader can understand how botched the accounts were for 30 years, how close the restaurant came to financial ruin (the many, many times), and yet, nothing dampers the sentimental glow of the dining room, the idea of fresh, simple foods served lovingly, the endless search for better, finer, fresher, local ingredients. The perfect radish, the perfect lemon, the perfect bunch of herbs, the perfect lamb. To track down the freshest ingredients, as told from the perspective of even the most freelance of scavengers for the restaurant, is a devotional task to a higher calling of a glorious slow food revolution.

To sink your teeth into something ripe from the vine, or to liven a dish with herbs freshly sprung from pots in the window. Wild vegetables and fruits. In a way, McNamee makes sense of Waters and Chez Panisse the same way they make sense of their work: In his mission to provide the best history of the woman and her groundbreaking restaurant, the author keeps it simple, fresh, and goes straight to the source for the perfect information. It's slow, tedious work, but at the end you have a literary meal hearty, delicious, and soul-satisfying.

This is a very inconsistent book about a really interesting character. The first half of the biography, about how Waters got interested in food and the influences that led her to be a leader of the California/New American cuisine movement, was fascinating. The combination of hippie hedonism and classic French precision was a delight to read. Waters is quite a character. Then the book got bogged down into a recitation of the various chefs at the restaurant and the managers who helped deal with its financial problems. The book ends on an up-note, describing in great detail several dinners and how the Chez Panisse philosophy gets translated into food on the table.½

This book was better than I expected. The last food-related -biographical novel I read was Damrosch’s Service Included, and though it was well-written, it was rather tiresome when the author exposed her love-life. McNamee’s work is an account of many aspects of Alice Waters, her passion, and her work. It’s deeply personal, and unfalteringly interesting. The author weaves the story through many different perspectives of people in Alice Waters’ life and Alice Waters, herself, and presents many of their first-hand accounts and opinions. It’s fantastically written.

As for Alice Waters as a person, I am her newest fan.

There are many passages in this 351 page biography that are quote-worthy, but this one made me most excited about Chez Panisse and cemented my desire to experience it myself:

If a diner asks a question about the food that his waiter can’t fully answer, the diner is likely to be invited into the kitchen, to talk to the cook responsible for the dish. The portions are adequate, but if someone especially likes something, and as long as there’s enough, it’s not a secret that the kitchen will gladly serve seconds. (p. 343)

I’d recommend this book to anyone who has the faintest desire to learn more about American cuisine, likes eating, or likes biographies. It might awaken a passion about food in you that you never knew you had. (5/5)

If you wonder where "slow food" came from, this is the originator. Very indepth and doesn't glamorize Alice Waters, but shows her with all her faults as well as her qualities.

Man, it has been a long time since I finished a book. No wonder I've been depressed. Or did the depression ruin my ability to concentrate?

Anyway, this book is called Alice Waters and Chez Panisee and covers those two (seemingly inseparable) subjects. Waters was just a waifish California gal with a very gifted palate until she spent some time in Europe and discovered the joys of fresh, simply prepared food. With borrowed money and a lot of big ideas she opened the famous Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley. Over the decades, Waters and company revolutionized American cuisine -- may, in fact, have created it.

This book is an authorized biography -- a little too authorized, if you ask me. The "author" frequently comes across as little more than a stenographer for Alice Waters. We learn from the author that Waters is a wispy, quiet little thing with a will of iron, a woman who knows how to get her way without seeming to do any of her own dirty work. (Just ask anyone who was ever fired at Chez Panisse, apparently.) The Boswell who penned this tome apparently learned his lesson, for he only allows Waters' worst qualities to peek out at the reader from between the lines. Even when Waters hears by phone that her husband has been through a disfiguring accident and decides that she ought to go on with her speaking tour of Europe, the author basically just shrugs and says "That's Alice!"

I don't mean to say that Alice Waters is an unsavory character. She appears to be a humane person who cares very much about her work. It seems clear that she has been, throughout her life, more committed to that work than to any romantic partner -- but so what? Such behavior would hardly be noticed in a man. Still, I wish someone would write an unauthorized, less worshipful biography of Waters...but one doubts that such a control freak as Waters would ever allow this to happen.

My eyes glazed over in the middle of the book -- one can only read so many menus -- but my interest returned as the action neared the present day. In the past decade Waters has become a food crusader, not just a restauranteur. She helps establish working gardens in schools, fights to improve the way we all eat. She thinks that the way we eat can change the world, and she's right. If you've switched from fast food to Slow Food, or learned to avoid high fructose corn syrup, or frequent the farmer's market, Alice Waters is part of the reason why. The pushy little waif has already perfected her own table, and now she wants to improve yours.

Wonderful book concerning Alice Waters who started the new movement in food towards freshness of ingredients and long preparation. The opposite of Martha Stewart's approach, which is all about showing off, this is a real foodie's book. Lots of insight about restaurants, and what not to do. How Chez Panisse succeeded in spite of itself.