<div>“Reed recounts with humor [post Katrina] home-improvement nightmares in a story that is part ‘Money Pitt’ and part love letter to her adopted home town.” —Washington Post, Front Page Feature After fifteen years of living like a vagabond on her reporter's schedule, Julia Reed got married and bought a house in the historic Garden District of New Orleans. Four weeks after she moved in, Hurricane Katrina struck.  Rich with sumptuous details and with the author's trademark humor, The House on First Street is the chronicle of a remarkable and often hilarious homecoming, as well as a thoroughly original tribute to our country's most original city. “What emerges from a heartrending, soul-stirring, rib-tickling and palate-prickling banquet of details is why Ms. Reed cannot leave New Orleans: love. It’s an undeceived devotion to a place and particularity that is admirable, and almost astonishing, in our increasingly deracinated culture.” —Wall Street Journal “Reed shares this sliver of her life with a light, conversational tone, and though somewhat tangential, she conveys the richness of pace and flavor of the Big Easy as life gets back to ‘normal’ without pretense.” —Christian Science Monitor “Reed is a breezy writer who nicely captures the despair and elation of seeing the city slowly come back to life.” —Chicago Sun-Times “With her usual keen eye for the quirky and outrageous, Reed finds much to amuse the reader in this delightful volume.” —Cokie Roberts, ABC and NPR News, author of Ladies of Liberty “With great literary panache and a throaty humor, Julia Reed captures the magical allure of the city, its food and its people . . . destined to be a classic.” —Walter Issacson, bestselling author of Einstein and Elon Musk</div>

The House on First Street

<div>Southern humorist Julia Reed celebrates Southern food, Southern women, and the Southern penchant for enjoying good times in this collection of her food writing. Julia Reed spends a lot of time thinking about ham biscuits. And cornbread and casseroles and the surprisingly modern ease of donning a hostess gown for one's own party. In Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns and Other Southern Specialties Julia Reed collects her thoughts on good cooking and the lessons of gracious entertaining that pass from one woman to another, and takes the reader on a lively and very personal tour of the culinary -- and social -- South. In essays on everything from pork chops to the perfect picnic Julia Reed revels in the simple good qualities that make the Southern table the best possible place to pull up a chair. She expounds on: the Southerner's relentless penchant for using gelatin why most things taste better with homemade mayonnaise the necessity of a holiday milk punch (and, possibly, a Santa hat) how best to "cook for compliments" (at least one squash casserole and Lee Bailey's barbequed veal are key). She provides recipes for some of the region's best-loved dishes (cheese straws, red velvet cake, breakfast shrimp), along with her own variations on the classics, including Fried Oysters Rockefeller Salad and Creole Crab Soup. She also elaborates on worthwhile information every hostess would do well to learn: the icebreaking qualities of a Ramos gin fizz and a hot crabmeat canapé, for example; the "wow factor" intrinsic in a platter of devilled eggs or a giant silver punchbowl filled with scoops of homemade ice cream. There is guidance on everything from the best possible way to "eat" your luck on New Year's Day to composing a menu in honor of someone you love. Grace and hilarity under gastronomic pressure suffuse these essays, along with remembrances of her gastronomic heroes including Richard Olney, Mary Cantwell, and M.F.K. Fisher. Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns and Other Southern Specialties is another great book about the South from Julia Reed, a writer who makes her experiences in—and out of—the kitchen a joy to read.</div>

Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns, and Other Southern Specialties

<div>In her new book, But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!, Julia Reed, a master of the art of eating, drinking, and making merry, takes the reader on culinary adventures in places as far flung as Kabul, Afghanistan and as close to home as her native Mississippi Delta and Florida's Gulf Coast. Along the way, Reed discovers the perfect Pimm's Royale at the Paris Ritz, devours delicious chuletons in Madrid, and picks up tips from accomplished hostesses ranging from Pat Buckley to Pearl Bailey and, of course, her own mother. Reed writes about the bounty—and the burden—of a Southern garden in high summer, tosses salads in the English countryside, and shares C.Z. Guest's recipe for an especially zingy bullshot. She understands the necessity of a potent holiday punch and serves it up by the silver bowl full, but she is not immune to the slightly less refined charms of a blender full of frozen peach daiquiris or a garbage can full of Yucca Flats. And then there are the parties: shindigs ranging from sultry summer suppers and raucous dinners at home to a Plymouth-like Thanksgiving feast and an upscale St. Patrick's Day celebration. This delightful collection of essays by Julia Reed, a master storyteller with an inimitable voice and a limitless capacity for fun, will show you how to entertain guests with style, have a good time yourself and always have that perfect pitcher of sangria ready at a moment's notice.</div>

But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!

<div>In considering the pleasures and absurdities of her native culture, Julia Reed quotes another Southern writer, Willie Morris, who said, “It’s the juxtapositions that get you down here.” These juxtapositions are, for Julia, the soul of the South, and in her warmhearted and funny new book, South Toward Home, she chronicles her adventures through the highs and the lows of Southern life—taking us everywhere from dive bars and the Delta Hot Tamale Festival to an impromptu shindig on a Mississippi River sandbar and a coveted seat on a Mardi Gras float. She writes about the region’s music and food, its pesky critters and prodigious drinking habits, its inhabitants’ penchant for making their own fun—and, crucially, their gift for laughing at themselves. With her distinctive voice and knowing eye, Julia also provides her take on the South’s more embarrassing characteristics from the politics of lust and the persistence of dry counties to the “seemingly bottomless propensity for committing a whole lot of craziness in the name of the Lord.” No matter what, she writes, “My fellow Southerners have brought me the greatest joy—on the page, over the airwaves, around the dinner table, at the bar or, hell, in the checkout line.” South Toward Home, with a foreword by Jon Meacham, is Julia Reed’s valentine to the place she knows and loves best.</div>

Julia Reed
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Books By Julia Reed (4 Books)

The House on First Street

Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns, and Other Southern Specialties

But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!

South Toward Home

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