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hhowe's review against another edition
4.0
Forget [b:Kitchen Confidential|33313|Kitchen Confidential Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (updated edition)|Anthony Bourdain|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168422043s/33313.jpg|4219]. This is Bourdain's bravest book.
sarahanne8382's review against another edition
4.0
My rather floundering attempt at doing NaNoWriMo this year has been writing a fictional, but true to the facts, retelling of "Typhoid" Mary Mallon's story, an idea that came from reading Judith Walzer Leavitt's absolutely superb, but somewhat dry Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health. A few years later chef Anthony Bourdain decided to write his own book about the beleagured Irish cook: Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical.
Bourdain's Urban Historical has a snappier entertaining narrative, helping to spark my creativity, but so much of his research is based on Leavitt that they almost feel like companion pieces. Bourdain still manages to put his own twist on Leavitt's impeccable research, though. As a career cook, Bourdain focuses on Mallon's role as a cook, adding a dimension that a medical historian like Leavitt couldn't. Also, not having any ties to the medical world, Bourdain explores more of the historical and cultural factors, including the situation of Irish immigrants after the potato famine and several details of life in New York around the turn of the 20th century.
For the casual reader, Bourdain's story gets the facts right and is a quicker, breezier read, so I'd recommend it to a wider audience than Leavitt's more tedious academic work. Both, however, are great books that try in their own ways to get to the heart of the urban legend surrounding Mary Mallon.
Bourdain's Urban Historical has a snappier entertaining narrative, helping to spark my creativity, but so much of his research is based on Leavitt that they almost feel like companion pieces. Bourdain still manages to put his own twist on Leavitt's impeccable research, though. As a career cook, Bourdain focuses on Mallon's role as a cook, adding a dimension that a medical historian like Leavitt couldn't. Also, not having any ties to the medical world, Bourdain explores more of the historical and cultural factors, including the situation of Irish immigrants after the potato famine and several details of life in New York around the turn of the 20th century.
For the casual reader, Bourdain's story gets the facts right and is a quicker, breezier read, so I'd recommend it to a wider audience than Leavitt's more tedious academic work. Both, however, are great books that try in their own ways to get to the heart of the urban legend surrounding Mary Mallon.
bridgetwf's review against another edition
3.0
Not sure what to say about this strange personal essay by Anthony Bourdain about Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary). I basically enjoyed it, and perhaps learned a bit about the woman whose moniker we all know, but mostly it was Bourdain waxing poetic about what state of mind he thinks Mary might have been in to make the choices she did to continue to infect people (as a fellow chef). Strange but somewhat fun for a Kindle Deal of the Day.
daniellersalaz's review against another edition
4.0
I didn’t know anything except the nickname Typhoid Mary when I started this book. I read it because I’ve realized (belatedly) how much Anthony Bourdain had to offer and was curious about why he’d chosen to write about Mary Mallon.
What I found was a meticulously researched and incredibly empathetic treatment of her case, including contemporaneous and current context into New York society as well as kitchen culture. Mary was a real person, not guilty, exactly, but at least complicit in the harm she caused people around her.
What a story.
What I found was a meticulously researched and incredibly empathetic treatment of her case, including contemporaneous and current context into New York society as well as kitchen culture. Mary was a real person, not guilty, exactly, but at least complicit in the harm she caused people around her.
What a story.
aprilalwayswithabook's review against another edition
3.0
Listen, I think reading this during a pandemic was the wrong way to go. I wonder if Bourdain would have been such an apologist for Mary Mallon if he had WRITTEN this during a pandemic. But I was nothing but angry abput how she, faced with the evidence that she had a virulent strain of Typhoid present in her body, refused to give up cooking as a profession "because thats just what cooks do." they treated her terribly, but you know - women weren't people then. Irish immigrants weren't people then. I make no excuses about how she was treated but I will never agree that she was in the right by continuing to cook at the expense of other people's lives. 2 or 20 or 20,000. I do not care.
kim_chelf's review against another edition
2.0
Interesting from a Public Health Perspective, but not a great book. Not an awful book either. Just okay.