Virtuoso Life - May/June 2008 - (Page 38) LUXE REPORT BOOKS The Saucier’s Apprentice: One Long Strange Trip Through the Great Cooking Schools of Europe By Bob Spitz (W. W. Norton, $24.95) Need a break? Biographer and longtime amateur chef Bob Spitz did, so after a traumatic divorce he took off for a few months to visit Europe’s greatest kitchens and ended up meeting some of the most unusual characters in France and Italy. Besides the colorful accounts of life among the worldly and the parochial, the memoir of his adventure describes in detail the secrets of the most delectable dishes, with recipes to try at home. It’s no surprise that his search for tasteful learning ends up rejuvenating both the body and the soul. The Last Days of Beijing By Michael Meyer (Walker & Company, $25.99) There’s nothing wrong with sprucing up the place for company, but Beijing has nearly cleaned itself out. In this searingly emotional tale of life in China’s capital (available June 24), Michael Meyer details the controversial removal of centuries-old hutongs, the humble, walled neighborhoods that surround the city core. Residents view hutongs as the heart of the city, but to outsiders they may appear slummy, and therein lies the problem. Meyer, a travel writer and English teacher known to locals as Professor Plumblossom, has lived in Beijing’s oldest hutong for more than two years. His account of how the construction of more impressive high-rises has uprooted thousands of residents gives reason for pause amid the Olympic hoopla to ask, At what cost? Poolside with Slim Aarons By Slim Aarons (Abrams, $75) This former war photographer was never one to chase the famous. Instead, Slim Aarons lived among them, lounging around the pools of the idle rich, partying with them during the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, and snapping luscious images of them in such haunts as Palm Beach and the Cap d’Antibes. Suntanned luxury still exists, of course, but it will never be as spirited again. Nor is it likely that any photographer will be there to record it so freely for posterity. Gregory Colbert: Selected Works 1992-2005 By Gregory Colbert (teNues, $7,500) If you ever daydream about how people could better commune with the world’s animals, this visual tale is for you (and a select 1,499 like-minded collectors). Colbert, a Canadian artist, travels to Earth’s most exotic locales and photographically records human relationships with elephants, primates, and whales, among other wildlife. Printed on Italian deckle-edge paper with a beeswax-coated Nepalese paper cover, the stunning, moving images provide stark testimony about how every living thing on the planet is connected. It’ll make you ponder how we ever forgot such basics. – CHARLES EALY Gregory Colbert’s wonderlands. (BOOKS) IRIDIO SEATTLE, (WHALE AND ELEPHANT) GREGORY COLBERT 38 V I RT U O S O L I F E
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