Warming up Julia Child The remarkable figures who shaped a legend

Great achievers often require a team working with them behind the scenes to support and guide them. Julia Child had a number of friends and associates who smoothed the way with publishers and television producers to craft her success. First came family, Julia's parents and her diplomat husband providing a secure foundation to give her creative energy and her ambition full rein. Among her professional team, chef Max Bugnard encouraged her in cooking school. Then came the redoubtable Simone "Simca" Beck, who ably collaborated on Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Avis DeVoto guided Julia and Simca through the difficulties of publishing their book, calling on professional contacts as well as testing recipes. William Koshland convinced Alfred Knopf to bring the ambitious book into print with Judith Jones as skilled editor. When television came calling, Ruth Lockwood understood just how to make Julia's groundbreaking shows both appealing and instructive to viewers. Horowitz's (A Taste for Provence, 2016) liberal use of Julia's notebooks and diaries adds telling detail to this biography. The chef's many fans will deeply appreciate Horowitz's intimate insights into how Julia developed a network of talented, nurturing colleagues who helped transform her into a highly revered cultural icon.

In this serviceable effort, historian Lefkowitz Horowitz (A Taste for Provence) examines the life of American culinary titan Julia Child through her closest relationships. As Lefkowitz Horowitz writes, Child's accomplishments as a world-renowned chef and author weren't "achieve alone" but rather with the help of "those who stimulated, nurtured, aided, and championed her"--namely her husband, Paul Child; coauthor Simone "Simca" Beck; friend and publishing guardian angel Avis DeVoto; William Koshland and Judith Jones of Knopf; and Ruth Lockwood, who worked closely on her television show--each of whom is ably captured here. Drawing from missives written from 1951 to 1966, Lefkowitz Horowitz juxtaposes Child's struggles with self-doubt (while readying Mastering the Art of French Cooking for publication, she wrote to DeVoto that she feared the manuscript would "lay a big rotten egg") and feeling like a "naïve bumpkin" with intimate exchanges of encouragement between the chef and her most trusted aides, as well as colorful accounts of Child's achievements as recorded in her husband's daily diary. Unfortunately, the workmanlike prose (appearing on the cover of Time, as Child did in 1966, was "the most recognizable tribute the U.S. had to offer") tends to give the narrative a textbook feel, while little to no new revelations are offered about the chef's life. While it's a solid recap, this covers mostly familiar material. (Apr.)