With the great, great author Antonio Lobo Antunes. (far left) His "Splendor of Portugal" is a Monster of a book!

Book "Restaurant Man" by @Jbastianich a terrific trench level primer on the biz. He knows where all the bodies are buried!

Gabrielle Hamilton's "Blood Bones and Butter" MUCH better than any of my books. Must Read!

A good time to mention that @KerryHowley book, THROWN is an absolutely wonderful exploration of the poorly understood sport of #MMA

Our upcoming series for CNN is based on David Marranis excellent book : ONCE IN A GREAT CITY : A Detroit Story. #1963

Get in the Game! First amazing book from @RoadsKingdoms

It is well past time to read this. Or re again.

Love this book. A lot of familiar faces from the. Good old/ bad old days

Elegant, deliciously immoral entry in series of sociopath as hero. Basis for the Wim Wenders film, the American Friend.

'Food writing' at its very, very best. Never surpassed. What all writing about eating should be.

Filthy, dangerous, depraved groundbreaking. And funny as Hell. Not an ideal role model, I grant you. But a writer I very much looked up to and wanted, for better or worse, to emulate.

The font of all wisdom. Orwell is right about nearly everything.

I wish I could write like Joan Didion.

Drama, romance, tragic history in SE Asia? I'm there! I re-read it frequently. Particularly when visiting Vietnam.

In George Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London' – one of Bourdain's favorite books and a model for 'Kitchen Confidential' – Orwell writes about his time doing scullery work in a Parisian restaurant, noting that "the power of swallowing quarts of wine, and then sweating it out before it can do much damage, is one of the compensations of [this] life."

Simply the great American novel, and the most precise use of the English language ever. Beautiful sentences, difficult material, razor-sharp satire—and a romantic tragedy by a master at the peak of his powers.

The perfect crime novel. Told almost entirely through dialogue—and with spare description—it was the first crime novel where crooks really talked like crooks... Uncompromising, brutally realistic, funny, and frightening—it’s the truest of its genre. [on B&N] The best, most realistic crime novel ever. Best dialogue in a crime novel ever.

This book changed my young life. Its mixture of passion, cynicism, hyperbole, and diatribe—and its take on the failures of the ’60s—mirrored my own worldview. Thompson’s language, his sentences, his lurid, violent, evocative prose inspired me—and clearly influenced my own work. [on B&N] The book that probably influenced me more than any other. A prose stylist and a personality who changed my life

I truly believe that everyone who loves books should read Charles Portis's True Grit, a novel I believe to be as great and as fundamentally, uniquely American a work of literature as Huckleberry Finn.

I'm on a John Gregory Dunne jag. All of it. Dutch Shea Junior, Jr., True Confessions, his non-fiction. He deserves a whole new readership.

Don Carpenter's Hard Rain Falling is amazing. Just got on board.

I'm on a John Gregory Dunne jag. All of it. Dutch Shea Junior, Jr., True Confessions, his non-fiction. He deserves a whole new readership.

Daniel Boulud's My French Cuisine is pretty incredible. It's personal. It's filled with breathtaking photographs. And it covers cherished, old school, classic dishes that no other chef would even attempt. It's instant history.

Violent. Twisted. Hilarious and beautiful.