Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir

Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl. This charming memoir is mostly about the authors stint as editor in chief at Gourmet magazine, which lasted until the magazine folded. Some also about her early life and experience as food critic for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Her experience at Gourmet tells the story of a lifestyle that will probably never some back, living opulently in New York with lots of expense account money. Basically a life that the internet destroyed. There are lots of funny anecdotes and great descriptions of meals and trips. The Paris excursion of the entire staff of Gourmet is a story of excess that cannot be matched.

Madame Fourcade's Secret War

Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler by Lynne Olson. This is the story of the french underground and the workings of its spy network. A fascinating story that I knew pieces of, but this tells the entire story from before the war to its end about the braze people who passed on vital information on the workings of the Nazis to the Allies. The impact they had on the direction and outcome of the war is tremendous, and the number of them who did not survive is sobering. Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was a native Parisian of the upper class, raised partly in Shanghai in the 1930s, when that city was more sophisticated than Paris. Tall, pretty and fashionable, she was the last person that the Germans would think would be a spy, which worked to her advantage. The fact that a women was the leader of the french underground was another factor. They passed on information to MI6, the British spy organization who then passed it on to military strategists. MI6 did not know that Fourcade was a women until well into the war, which again was to her advantage, as she assumed correctly that if the British knew she was a women they would have dismissed her information as invalid. The information that was passed to the Allies helped to delay the deployment of the V-1 and V-2 rockets by the Germans, which would have possibly won them the war if they were deployed sooner. Information from the resistance also directed the planning for D-Day in Normandy. This is a great true story that is finally being told.

Ten Caesars

Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine by Barry S. Strauss As the title implies, this is a collection of biographical sketches 10 roman emperors. But the title is a bit odd, since the authors starts by pointing out that Julius Caesar was a dictator and not an emperor. The emperors begin with Augustus, and this book ends with Constantine, the first Christian emperor. Between the two of those there were many more than ten emperors, but the author concentrates on the most impactful. Hadrian, Nero, Diocletian, Marcus Aurelius are all well known names to people. But the succession from one emperor to another was not easy. Many times there were civil wars, and there could up to 4 emperors in a year before a victor came through. In many ways the times covered by this book helped to shape the modern world, as the empire evolved and the Roman empire engulfed many cultures.