"A delight." --"The New York Times"
"What a joy!" --"The" "Washington Post"
"Endlessly engaging." --"The Philadelphia Inquirer"
"Inspiring.." --"Entertainment Weekly"
"Delighful and ebulliently written. . . . Her joy just about jumps off the books pages."
--"Christian Science Monitor"
"Lively, infectious. . . . Her elegant but unfussy prose pulls the reader into her stories." --"Chicago Sun-Times"
"Captivating. . . . Her marvelously distinctive voice is present on every page."
--"San Francisco Chronicle"

Julia Child was born in Pasadena, California. She graduated from Smith College and worked for the OSS during WWII; afterwards she lived in Paris, studied at the Cordon Bleu, and taught cooking with Simone Beck and Louisette Bartholle, with whom she wrote the first volume of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking "(1961). In 1963 Boston's WGBH launched "The French Chef" television series, which made Julia Child a national celebrity, earning her the Peabody Award in 1965 and an Emmy in 1966; subsequent public television shows were "Julia Child & Company" (1978), "Julia Child & More Company" (1980)--both of which were accompanied by cookbooks--and "Dinner at Julia's" (1983), followed by "Cooking with Master Chefs" (1993), "In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs" (1995), and her collaboration with Jacques Pepin, "Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home" (1999). The 40th anniversary edition of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 "was published in 2001.Alex Prud'homme is Julia's grandnephew. A freelance writer, his journalism has appeared in "The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Time, "and "People." He is the author of "The Cell Game "and the co-author (with Michael Cherkasky) of "Forewarned. "He lives in Brooklyn, New York."