For readers who can't get enough Julia Child, Sara B. Franklin's The Editor offers one more inroad to the great chef. Judith Jones famously shepherded Mastering the Art of French Cooking to publication. But readers who come for Julia should find themselves equally smitten with Judith, a literary and culinary tastemaker of sound judgment and tremendous integrity.
Jones (1924-2017) grew up comfortably in Manhattan before landing at New York publishing giant Doubleday, from which she took a leave so she could travel abroad, where she fell in love with food. Doubleday established a Paris office, where Jones rescued from a slush heap what would become the 1952 publishing sensation The Diary of Anne Frank. Jones's editorial eye earned her a stateside publishing career at the male-dominated and prestigious Knopf, where she worked for more than half a century.
Anyone enamored of publishing's golden age will thrill to reports on Jones's professional duties. In her introduction, Franklin says that The Editor is "not a definitive biography," and it needn't be. Informed by Franklin's interviews with Jones, the book has enough "Judith told me"s to suggest a full-bodied and full-throated collaboration, and there's no other word for its juicest passages but delicious. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer