After World War II, a newly affluent United States reached for its own gourmet culture, one at ease with the French international style of Escoffier, but also distinctly American. Enter James Beard, authority on cooking and eating, his larger-than-life presence and collection of whimsical bow ties synonymous with the nation's food for decades, even after his death in 1985.In the first biography of Beard in twenty-five years, acclaimed writer John Birdsall argues that Beard's struggles as a closeted gay man directly influenced his creation of an American cuisine. Starting in the 1920s, Beard escaped loneliness and banishment by traveling abroad to places where people ate for pleasure, not utility, and found acceptance at home by crafting an American ethos of food likewise built on passion and delight. Informed by never-before-tapped correspondence and lush with details of a golden age of home cooking, The Man Who Ate Too Much is a commanding portrait of a towering figure who still represents the best in food.
In the first portrait of James Beard in twenty-five years, John Birdsall accomplishes what no prior telling of Beard's life and work has done: He looks beyond the public image of the "Dean of American Cookery" to give voice to the gourmet's complex, queer life and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the twentieth century.Informed by previously overlooked correspondence, years of archival research, and a close reading of everything Beard wrote, this majestic biography traces the emergence of personality in American food while reckoning with Beard's own need for love and connection, arguing that Beard turned an unapologetic pursuit of pleasure into a new model for food authors and experts. At a time when Julia Child, Richard Olney, and French food reigned supreme, The Man Who Ate Too Much demonstrates how Beard's triumphs and failures, his self-exile and physical insecurities, revolutionized American cuisine.Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1903, Beard spent summers on the Oregon coast with an unconventional mother, forging the taste memories that came to define his later career. A trauma in his college years propelled him to New York City, where he became, in the 1940s, host of one of the first television cooking shows. His flouting of the rules of publishing led him to craft some of the most expressive cookbooks of the twentieth century, with recipes that live on.As Beard's fame grew, Birdsall powerfully demonstrates how he