The Charleston Library Society and Buxton Books welcomes author John Birdsall to discuss his most recent book, The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard. Dubbed the Dean of American Cookery, James Beard (1903-1985) was widely credited in the second half of the twentieth century as the founder of a national cuisine. Before it was published in 1972, one of his greatest books, James Beard’s American Cookery, had the working title Everything James Beard Knows About Cooking.

For a couple of generations following World War II, Beard was American food—his prodigious frame and charming, charismatic manner seemed to embody the cuisine of a large and diverse nation. But what exactly was James Beard’s American cooking? What are its roots? The traditions that nurture it? Whose cooking does it celebrate and whose does it ignore—even erase? How does the South figure in Beard’s reckoning of the nation’s food? In this talk, John Birdsall will describe the history of American cooking in the twentieth century, and the ways James Beard—notorious for bending the truth, who’d become famous in part for his skill at inventing myths about himself—invented American food.

Towards the end of the program, Birdsall will be joined by Charleston’s own Beard-award winning chef Mike Lata to conduct a Q&A session. This event is free, but an RSVP is required. After submitting your RSVP, you will receive your Zoom invitation email on the day of the event.

To RSVP to the event, please click here: https://charlestonlibrarysociety.org/event/speaker-series-john-birdsall-and-q-a-session-with-chef-mike-lata/

To purchase a copy of Birdsall’s The Man Who Ate Too Much click here: https://buxton-books.square.site/product/the-man-who-ate-too-much-the-life-of-james-beard/3202?cs=true