Bourdain : the definitive oral biography / Laurie Woolever.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

New York Times bestseller

An unprecedented behind-the-scenes view into the life of Anthony Bourdain from the people who knew him best

When Anthony Bourdain died in June 2018, fans around the globe came together to celebrate the life of an inimitable man who had dedicated his life to traveling nearly everywhere (and eating nearly everything), shedding light on the lives and stories of others. His impact was outsized and his legacy has only grown since his death.

Now, for the first time, we have been granted a look into Bourdain's life through the stories and recollections of his closest friends and colleagues. Laurie Woolever, Bourdain's longtime assistant and confidante, interviewed nearly a hundred of the people who shared Tony's orbit--from members of his kitchen crews to his writing, publishing, and television partners, to his daughter and his closest friends--in order to piece together a remarkably full, vivid, and nuanced vision of Tony's life and work.

From his childhood and teenage days, to his early years in New York, through the genesis of his game-changing memoir Kitchen Confidential to his emergence as a writing and television personality, and in the words of friends and colleagues including Eric Ripert, José Andrés, Nigella Lawson, and W. Kamau Bell, as well as family members including his brother and his late mother, we see the many sides of Tony--his motivations, his ambivalence, his vulnerability, his blind spots, and his brilliance.

Unparalleled in scope and deeply intimate in its execution, with a treasure trove of photos from Tony's life, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography is a testament to the life of a remarkable man in the words of the people who shared his world.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Cast of Characters (in order of first appearance) (p. x)
• Introduction (p. xv)
• 1 "I Absolutely Always Saw a Talent in Him": Early Life (p. 1)
• 2 "Super Smart, Super Funny": The Teenage Years (p. 7)
• 3 "A Lot of Fun to Be Around": Young Adulthood (p. 17)
• 4 "It Was What the Cool Kids Were Doing": The Early New York Years (p. 23)
• 5 "He Just Wanted to Be a Writer in the Worst Way": Meeting Joel Rose (p. 39)
• 6 "They Got Some Money, and It Just Went into Their Veins": Heroin (p. 43)
• 7 "I'm Tony Motherfucking Bourdain-You Got a Problem?": New York in the Nineties (p. 49)
• 8 "Such Was My Lust to See My Name in Print" (p. 55)
• 9 "Appalling Stories of Remorseless Criminality": The Stone Brothers (p. 59)
• 10 "You've Got a Long Con Going Here": The Genesis of Kitchen Confidential (p. 65)
• 11 "It Was Picking Up a Rock Off the Restaurant Scene and Showing Everything That Was Underneath It" (p. 69)
• 12 "He Was Not Just a Cook Anymore; He Was a Real 3D Person" (p. 73)
• 13 "I'm Not Gonna Censor the Guy": Editing and Publishing Kitchen Confidential (p. 79)
• 14 "The Brass Ring Comes Around Only Once" (p. 85)
• 15 "He Never Came Off Book Tour" (p. 91)
• 16 "I'd Love to Travel the World": A Cook's Tour Begins (p. 97)
• 17 "Tony Was So Reluctant to Do Television" (p. 103)
• 18 "He Was Ahead of His Time": The End of A Cook's Tour (p. 117)
• 19 "He Was Prepared to Piss Off Everybody": Travel Channel (p. 123)
• 20 "He Was Very Untethered": The Early No Reservations Years (p. 129)
• 21 "Basically, He Kidnapped My Cat": Tony Meets Ottavia (p. 139)
• 22 "Let's Spin the Wheel Again": Beirut, a Baby (p. 143)
• 23 "It Was Not the Easiest Thing": Life on the Road as a Family (p. 149)
• 24 "Don't Bother Tony": Navigating Friendships and Fame (p. 155)
• 25 "We Got Shit Done": Making No Reservations (p. 167)
• 26 "You See a Person Who's Come Full Circle, and He's Seen the World": Medium Raw (p. 179)
• 27 "I Knew I Could Write the Story I Needed to Write": Tony as Publisher, Graphic Novelist, and Screenwriter (p. 183)
• 28 "I Felt Like I Knew Him All My Life": David Simon Recalls Tony (p. 193)
• 29 "He Could Have Sat in a Santa's Throne in a Shopping Mall": The Onstage Experience (p. 197)
• 30 "He Was a Curator of People" (p. 205)
• 31 "He Was a Man of Extremes" (p. 215)
• 32 "Darker, More Transgressive, and More Lurid": Roads & Kingdoms (p. 221)
• 33 "Everyone Felt They Knew Him": Charisma and Reserve (p. 227)
• 34 "Get a Big Fucking Body Bag": Frustration and Isolation in the Field (p. 233)
• 35 "Tony Had a Burden of Leadership That Was Real" (p. 245)
• 36 "He Always Had to Perform the Role of Tony" (p. 251)
• 37 "Such an Unlikely Program for Him": The Taste (p. 259)
• 38 "Push the Boundary Really Hard, Really Fast": The Move to CNN (p. 265)
• 39 "I Really Wasn't Doing It for the Cronut": Tony Tries a Talk Show (p. 275)
• 40 "Middle-Class White People Going to Poverty-Stricken Parts of the World ... without Being Dicks about It" (p. 279)
• 41 "It Was Too Much of a Dream": The Bourdain Market (p. 283)
• 42 "You Don't Direct Tony Bourdain": Life on the Road with Parts Unknown (p. 289)
• 43 "You Were That Guy Who Got Arrested": Jason and Yeganeh Rezaian in Iran (p. 311)
• 44 "This Is Just Another Tribe": Brazilian Jiu-Jirsu (p. 321)
• 45 "Maybe You'll Find Another Chance at Love": The End of the Marriage (p. 331)
• 46 "Tony's Changed; Tony's Very Different Now" (p. 337)
• 47 "He Was Attracted to Chaos" (p. 351)
• 48 "They're Gonna Tear You Apart": Alienating Friends (p. 355)
• 49 "He Was Like a Young Kid in Love" (p. 363)
• 50 "Every Good Band Eventually Breaks Up" (p. 371)
• 51 "Embracing the Chaos": Rome and Puglia (p. 375)
• 52 "We Bolstered Each Other's Incorrect Assertion That Asking for Help Is Somehow a Mistake" (p. 379)
• 53 "Call It Impostor Syndrome, If You Want, but Tony Definitely Had It" (p. 383)
• 54 "We Should Do Something Together": Kenya with W. Kamau Bell (p. 387)
• 55 "I Knew Someone Was Doomed": Hong Kong (p. 393)
• 56 "You Can't Put Your Arms around a Memory": New York, Asturias, Florence (p. 403)
• 57 "All OK": Alsace (p. 411)
• 58 "It's Hard to See Things as They Really Are" (p. 417)
• 59 "He Was an Extraordinary Witness and Voice for the World" (p. 431)
• Acknowledgments (p. 437)
• Index of Contributors (p. 439)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

After decades of Anthony Bourdain candidly sharing his own story, his longtime assistant Woolever (co-author, World Travel: An Irreverent Guide) has written an unfiltered study of Bourdain's life, as seen by the people closest to him (among them his producer Zamir Gotta and CNN colleague Anderson Cooper). The narrative addresses Bourdain's life from childhood on: his kitchen career as a line cook and eventually executive chef; nominal writing success with early novels; breakthrough memoir Kitchen Confidential; and early awkwardness on camera, plus the cult success of No Reservations and widespread fame of Parts Unknown. Woolever compiles the perspectives of Bourdain's friends and family about the way these professional experiences impacted him, including during his tumultuous final year. Life was rarely rosy; Bourdain could be harsh, jaded, and disengaged when things didn't go his way. But those moments coexisted with Bourdain's global compassion and incredible personal selflessness (evinced by his championing Jason Rezaian's case and supporting writers via his book imprint). Woolever offers good insight about these aspects of Bourdain and his world. VERDICT Any Anthony Bourdain fan, of which there are many, will enjoy this thoughtful tribute to an impactful cultural figure.--Zebulin Evelhoch, Deschutes P.L., OR

Publishers Weekly Review

Celebrated chef and author Anthony Bourdain (1956--2018) cuts a charismatic yet enigmatic figure in this kaleidoscopic oral history. Woolever (Appetites), Bourdain's longtime assistant and coauthor, interviewed 91 friends, relatives, chefs, editors, publishers, and producers to chart his rise from hard-living New York chef (Bourdain and co-workers, who did heroin together, would "turn their heads and throw up into garbage cans" while working on the line, a former colleague reports) to bestselling author with his restaurant tell-all, Kitchen Confidential, and host of the culinary travel shows No Reservations and Parts Unknown, and his death by suicide in 2018. Many of the recollections are retrospectively colored by Bourdain's bleak end, and interviewees' efforts to locate an inchoate darkness within him--"I saw in him this desire to be somehow swept away into the oblivion" says a former Parts Unknown cinematographer--yield little insight. The book does, however, succeed as a revealing account of the making of a celebrity, following Bourdain as he crafted a mediagenic persona--"he published Kitchen Confidential, and he never came off book tour," observes an editor--that was brash, profane, articulate, empathetic, and seemingly wide open to new experiences and adoring fans, yet perpetually distanced. This fascinating mosaic doesn't unearth Bourdain's inner demons, but it does capture the inimitable legacy he left behind. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (Oct.)

Booklist Review

Woolever, Bourdain's longtime assistant and his coauthor on Appetites (2016) and World Travel (2021), began interviewing 91 of Bourdain's companions and associates after his death and "came to realize that I'd really known only a fraction of who Tony was, what motivated him, his ambivalence, his vulnerability, his blind spots, and his brilliance." After her introduction, Woolever cedes the floor to those 91 family members, lovers, friends, colleagues, and artistic collaborators, many of whom are household names. The result is a fascinating account of Bourdain's childhood through his untimely death, conjuring him as he evolves from curious kid to punky teen to young, heroin-addicted cook; to published fiction writer; author of the best-selling memoir, Kitchen Confidential; genius behind two groundbreaking travel shows, No Reservations and Parts Unknown; and a genuine celebrity. It also reveals a man of deep contradictions, described as both shy and awkward and "extraordinarily charismatic," who chased fame while fleeing it, and suffered moments of extreme loneliness and other emotional struggles. His girlfriend at the time of his death, Asia Argento, is notably absent from the contributors, while being lit in an unequivocally negative spotlight by the testimony of others. The oral-history format makes for a rangy, sometimes self-contradictory, and roundly true-feeling portrait of a captivating person. Bourdain's fans will find it impossible to put down.

Kirkus Book Review

A collage of remembrances creates a multifaceted portrait of the late author, chef, and TV host. Journalist Woolever, who worked as an assistant and co-author for Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018), puts together recollections from nearly 100 people--including friends, family, co-workers, ex-wives, editors, chefs--to create a candid portrait of a complicated man. Growing up, Bourdain was smart and funny but difficult. "Firmly ensconced in the bad boy persona" (per a college friend), he consumed a cornucopia of drugs, including LSD, cocaine, and heroin. After two unsuccessful years at Vassar, he went to the Culinary Institute of America and worked in many restaurant kitchens before becoming executive chef at Les Halles in Manhattan. He aspired, though, to become a successful novelist; after studying in a creative writing program, he published two novels but felt frustrated that they didn't catapult him to fame. He achieved instant notoriety, however, with Kitchen Confidential, his uncensored view of the underside of the restaurant scene, conveyed in a style that reflected what his editor called his characteristic "provocation and macho bravado." Friends portray Bourdain as loyal, generous, charismatic, but always "slightly detached." As his editor noted, "he had a way of talking to you where you still felt like you were part of an audience, but you were waiting for the other people to show up." Others, too, noticed that Bourdain always seemed to be performing, "always playing with how he looked to other people; he was very conscious of it," according to one of his NYC kitchen colleagues. Once he took to the road as a cultural journalist, hosting shows on the Food Network, Travel Channel, and CNN, he became a recognizable celebrity. Fame, though, exacerbated tensions that ended two marriages. "So much of his life was going to beautiful places and being all alone," a producer observed. In the end, he was undermined by persistent demons and, as Woolever notes, self-destructive "bad choices." A chorus of candid voices creates an engaging biography. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.