Memorable moments with food―collected by "one of the best of the young food writers" (Jeffrey Steingarten, Vogue food critic). New York Times Magazine food editor Amanda Hesser has showcased the food-inspired recollections of some of America's leading writers―playwrights, screenwriters, novelists, poets, journalists―in the magazine. Eat, Memory collects the twenty-six best stories and recipes to accompany them.Ann Patchett confronts her stubbornness in a heated argument she once had with her then-boyfriend, now husband, over dinner at the famed Paris restaurant Taillevent. Tom Perrotta explains how his long list of food aversions almost landed him in an East German prison. Gabrielle Hamilton finds that hiring a blind cook leads her into ethical terrain she wasn't prepared to navigate. And poet Billy Collins muses over his relationship with a fish he once ate.Also included are stories by Chang-rae Lee, Patricia Marx, John Burnham Schwartz, George Saunders, Colson Whitehead, Kiran Desai, Pico Iyer, and Heidi Julavits, among others. 6 illustrations Food evokes memories, as Proust famously observed, and this collection of essays that appeared originally among the pages of the New York Times gives readers a grand buffet of viewpoints on how foods have influenced the course of writers’ lives in both great and small ways. Ann Patchett tells about an argument with a boyfriend that ruined what should have been a perfect, Lucullan repast in one of Paris’ most esteemed restaurants. Heidi Julavits recalls a sojourn in Japan where a delicious but unvarying diet of Japanese cuisine left her hungering for American-style sweets. Newsman Tucker Carlson professes his love for baked beans. Gary Shteyngart raises a paean to garlic as served profligately at a beloved Greenwich Village restaurant. Most of these essays have recipes appended so that readers whose own memories have been stirred by the printed word can produce the dishes they’ve just read about. --Mark Knoblauch Amanda Hesser is the founder and executive chair of Food52, which also encompasses the heritage brands Schoolhouse and Dansk, as well as a former New York Times food editor and the author of the bestselling and James Beard Award–winning Essential New York Times Cookbook . She lives in Brooklyn.