The Man Who Ate Too Much

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. At a time when stuffy French restaurants and soulless Continental cuisine prevailed, Beard invented something strange and new: the notion of an American cuisine.

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 the outwardly gregarious 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.

Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1903, Beard would journey from the pristine Pacific Coast to New York's Greenwich Village by way of gay undergrounds in London and Paris of the 1920s. The failed actor–turned–Manhattan canapé hawker–turned–author and cooking teacher was the jovial bachelor uncle presiding over America's kitchens for nearly four decades. In the 1940s he hosted one of the first television cooking shows, and by flouting the rules of publishing would end up crafting some of the most expressive cookbooks of the twentieth century, with recipes and stories that laid the groundwork for how we cook and eat today.

In stirring, novelistic detail, The Man Who Ate Too Much brings to life a towering figure, a man who still represents the best in eating and yet has never been fully understood-until now. This is biography of the highest order, a book about the rise of America's food written by the celebrated writer who fills in Beard's life with the color and meaning earlier generations were afraid to examine.

Short-listed for James Beard Foundation Book Award 2022

“"The Man Who Ate Too Much makes a fascinating and persuasive case that [James] Beard was brought to an idea of culinary Americanness by re-experiencing the American West."”

"Birdsall’s sentences have rhythm, too, and compress time and place so that a meal becomes a history." -- Ligaya Mishan - The New York Times Book Review
"Birdsall is not a polite biographer, and I say this with admiration... [he] applies his deep research to give us critical readings of Beard’s culinary style, documenting its zigzagging development through travel and apprenticeship, looking into dishes that shaped him and crucial meals he cooked, finding intellectual and sensual meaning in the relics of Beard’s delights." -- Tejal Rao - The New York Times Magazine
"Birdsall has a good story to tell, and tells it well…" -- Adam Gopnik - The New Yorker
"This is the first biography of Beard in 25 years and looks at not only his professional achievements but also his personal life as a gay man in 20th century America." -- The food books of 2020 to buy - The Independent
"Packed with sensory detail, The Man Who Ate Too Much is a magnificent tribute to a titan of American life, who taught us, through the coded – or universal – language of food, our inalienable right to the pursuit of pleasure." -- Stephanie Sy-Quia - Times Literary Supplement

John Birdsall is the author of The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard and the recipient of two James Beard Awards for food and culture writing. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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