The French Chef in America: Julia Child's Second Act by Alex Prud'homme

As a journalist Alex Prud’homme has covered subjects ranging from from French cuisine to Monster Trucks, biotech, terrorism, energy, water, art, and business for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Talk, People, and Time.

As an author, he has written seven books, most notably as co-author of Julia Child’s 2006 memoir, My Life in France, a #1 NYT best-seller which inspired half the film “Julie & Julia,” and won the Literary Food Writing Award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP).

Prud'homme's 2011 book, The Ripple Effect: the Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century, was published by Scribner, and inspired Participant Media’s 2012 documentary film “Last Call at the Oasis.”

In 2012, Prud'homme wrote Hydrofracking: What Everyone Needs to Know, for Oxford University Press.

In 2016, Knopf published The French Chef in America: Julia Child’s Second Act, Prud'homme's dramatic account of how Julia left “The French Chef” and classical French cuisine to re-Americanize herself as "Julia Child," reached the peak of her success and suffered her darkest moments, while finding her true voice in the 1970s.

In 2017, Thames & Hudson published Our Lives in France: the Photographic Journey of Paul and Julia Child, a book of Paul Child’s evocative black-and-white images of Paris and Marseille in 1948-54. It is a visual companion to My Life in France, told from Paul’s perspective. Katie Pratt edited the images, while Prud’homme wrote the text.

Prud’homme’s latest project is a history of food at the White House, to be published by Knopf. It examines key meals that helped shape America, and the central (if overlooked) role food has played in the nation's history, from George Washington and his slave-chef Hercules to the omnivorous Obamas and the fast-food friendly Trumps.

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