Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir

Pioneering culinary writer and adored restaurant critic Ruth Reichl decided to go into the glitzy and high-stakes world of magazine publishing, accepting the opportunity and the risk of a lifetime. She now documents, for the first time, her historic career as editor-in-chief of Gourmet, where she led a paradigm shift in how we see food.

Ruth Reichl turned down an opportunity from Condé Nast to become the editor of the nation's oldest epicurean magazine. She didn't want to be anyone's boss; she was a writer, not a manager. Still, Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight years old, and it had influenced her professional life. She was unable to say no.

This is the tale of a former Berkeley hippy who was afraid of losing her soul when she entered the business world. It tells the tale of how the development of the farm-to-table movement altered our eating habits forever and how restaurants started to play a significant role in popular culture. Famous chefs like Eric Ripert and David Chang, eccentric authors like David Foster Wallace, and a vibrant team of editors and creative designers who, under Reichl's direction, turned stately Gourmet into a cutting-edge magazine will all be introduced to readers. This was the heyday of print media, the last rapacious flourish before the Internet upended the magazine industry.

Save Me the Plums, which comes with recipes, is a personal account of a woman embracing her leadership role, leaving her mark, pursuing her passion, and clinging to her aspirations despite finding herself in an unexpected situation.