Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #882109 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 273 pages

Amazon.com Review
Short bios and favorite recipes (some of them vegan) from people who are or were vegetarians at some point in their lives. Try Ghandi's Spicy Chapatis and Gujarati-Style carrot salad.

From Publishers Weekly
Biographies that praise and simplify to the point of insipidity, combined with fewer than 80 recipes (several with only circumstantial connections to their subjects) and Berry's relentlessly self-congratulatory description of his research (we're even told he has his own Greek lexicon) cause this book to drown in mediocrity. Berry ( The New Vegetarians ) divides 26 vegetarians into three categories: "immortals," like Pythagoras and Christ; "visionaries," such as 19th-century nutritionist Sylvester Graham and Diet for a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappe; and "contemporaries," like Cloris Leachman and I. B. Singer. Bronson Alcott's eccentricities are whitewashed almost out of recognition, and we even learn how George Bernard Shaw's oeuvre could have been improved: a Shaw play on vegetarianism might have started "a worldwide dietary revolution." At least the savory rice and lentil curry comes from Shaw's own kitchen. That's preferable to the "imaginative recreation" of Leo Tolstoy's baked macaroni en casserole that banishes cheese in favor of tahini, bringing it in line with the nondairy diet preferences of Rynn Berry.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Entertaining vegetarian history
The author has come up with authentic recipes(or reasonable fac-similes thereof) reflecting the tastes of famous vegetarians throughout the ages. Anecdotal sketches give life to each of the 32 celebrities from Plato and Pythagoras to Tolstoi, Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw along with "contemporaries" like Paul McCartney and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Mr.Berry writes gracefully, and the 80 recipes are not only fascinating, but have been kitchen tested tested by the author for "savoriness." Many recipes are unfired. The book is fully referenced with footnotes(in the back). This is a superb book!

Interesting
Rynn Berry's "Famous Vegetarians and their favorite recipes" presents an overview of famous vegetarians in history. Each biography of the 30 famous vegetarians is about 3-6 pages long. It is by no means a comprehensive nor referenced work (not that I'm questioning his sources, but that being that this book features short pieces of fascinating individuals, it only makes sense to provide a "works cited" list or a reference list for those who are interested to pursue their research). If you are looking for great vegan/vegetarian recipes, you are at the wrong place. Most of the recipes are not too appetizing.

For charm & a trip to...
a time or feeling fast fading from the landscape. The earnest pen-and-ink drawings of famous vegetarians, the surprisingly fresh biographical sketches, and a general feeling of creativity and gentility all call forth an era for which the word "nostalgia" may too soon apply. As you may gather, the recipes are just part of the appeal, although many (have even vegetarians become so jaded?) seem to have forgotten the homely joys of well-prepared grains and vegetables. Cloris Leachman's baked potato recipe sounds good & I'll probably get a charge from eating asparagas a la Plutarch. But it's Berry's fine sensibility, along with a delighful expansiveness (exemplified by the inclusion of early transcendentalist philosopher Bronson Alcott), that earns this book a place on my shelf, where it would make sense between a John Muir or Emily Dickinson collection and "Walden."