Description
From Library Journal Bloomsbury launches its "Urban Historicals" series with a pair of books on both New York's most infamous cook and what (if true) would have been the city's greatest hoax. Bourdain, the chef and author of last year's cheeky Kitchen Confidential, attempts to retell the story of Mary Mallon from a cook's perspective. Early in the last century, the Irish immigrant Mallon became notorious as "Typhoid Mary" and was imprisoned by health authorities on an island in the East River after (unwittingly or not) spreading typhoid to 33 victims, with three confirmed deaths. Like Lizzie Borden, Mallon has received various writers' interpretations, the last in a 1996 biography by Judith Leavitt of the same title (LJ 5/15/96) that told the tale with more health science and a less cranky style. Bourdain chooses to light the story's shadows by relating to her as a once-proud, broken-down cook, interpreting Mallon's infecting spree with a kitchen-hardened aplomb and New York attitude. Chapter titles tend toward the snarky and hip ("There's Something About Mary," "Typhoid sucks"), and only a New York guy would describe bacteria settling into a gall bladder "like rent-controlled pensioners." Yet when, at the work's end, Bourdain makes a cook-to-cook offering at Mary's grave, it somehow feels more moving than stagey. Rose, a novelist and founder of the 1980s literary magazine Between C&D, has created "an entertainment, a reimagining of a piece of the past that may well have been imagined in the first place." His light-handed telling concerns a possible hoax from about 1824, when a butcher and a carpenter in New York's old Centre Market purportedly discussed their plan to solve overbuilt Manhattan's dangerous bottom-heaviness by sawing it in half, turning the top part of the island around, and reattaching it at the Battery. Word spread, and the enormous project seized the imaginations of Manhattan's poor, who showed up by the hundreds with saws and shovels, while merchants set aside enormous stores of food for the expected work crews. So, at least, claimed one of the hoaxers years later in a conversation with his amateur-historian nephew. Instead of being the "Crop Circles" phenomenon of its day, however, there seems no reason to believe the sawing scam was put over on anyone beyond the credulous nephew who first recorded it; Rose is quite aware of this and puts this re-embroidered lore into entertaining context, along the way creating a charming, atmospheric portrait of old New York. He also notes some classic period cons (the 161-year-old slave who nursed George Washington; the embalmed mermaid) perpetrated by the era's proven master humbuggers. Nathan Ward, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist In Typhoid Mary , Bourdain, renowned chef and author of Kitchen Confidential (2000), reexamines the legend of Mary Maflon, otherwise known as the infamous Typhoid Mary. Unwittingly responsible for an outbreak of typhoid fever in Oyster Bay, Long Island, in 1904, Mary, a cook, fled when authorities began to suspect that she was a carrier. Resurfacing in New York City, she continued to infect victims with the typhoid bacillus until she was caught and incarcerated by the authorities. Investing a tragic tale with a new twist, Bourdain plays historical detective, providing an entertaining and suspenseful evocation of turn-of-the-century New York. Margaret Flanagan Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Investing a tragic tale with a new twist, Bourdain plays historical detective, providing an entertaining and suspenseful evocation of turn-of-the-century New York.” ― Booklist “[Bourdain] presents Mallon's story as a tale of hot pursuit, with the rude gusto and barbed wit that made Kitchen Confidential such a full-bodied pleasure.” ― Adam Shatz, The New York Times Book Review Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018) is the author of the bestselling Kitchen Confidential , the Urban Historical Typhoid Mary , and A Cook's Tour , which was turned into a successful series by the same name for the Food Network. His novels include The Bobby Gold Stories , Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo . Read more
Features & Highlights
- From the best-selling author of Kitchen Confidential comes this true, thrilling tale of pursuit through the kitchens of New York City at the turn of the century.By the late nineteenth century, it seemed that New York City had put an end to the outbreaks of typhoid fever that had so frequently decimated the city's population. That is until 1904, when the disease broke out in a household in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Authorities suspected the family cook, Mary Mallon, of being a carrier. But before she could be tested, the woman, soon to be known as Typhoid Mary, had disappeared. Over the course of the next three years, Mary worked at several residences, spreading her pestilence as she went. In 1907, she was traced to a home on Park Avenue, and taken into custody. Institutionalized at Riverside Hospital for three years, she was released only when she promised never to work as a cook again. She promptly disappeared. For the next five years Mary worked in homes and institutions in and around New York, often under assumed names. In February 1915, a devastating outbreak of typhoid at the Sloane Hospital for Women was traced to her. She was finally apprehended and reinstitutionalized at Riverside Hospital, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
- Typhoid Mary
- is the story of her infamous life. Anthony Bourdain reveals the seedier side of the early 1900s, and writes with his renowned panache about life in the kitchen, uncovering the horrifying conditions that allowed the deadly spread of typhoid over a decade.
- Typhoid Mary
- is a true feast for history lovers and Bourdain lovers alike.
