The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest
(eBook)

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Hoopla Extract Information

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(
    [year] => 2007
    [artist] => William Alexander
    [fiction] => 
    [coverImageUrl] => https://cover.hoopladigital.com/hbg_9781565125841_270.jpeg
    [titleId] => 15956928
    [isbn] => 9781565125841
    [abridged] => 
    [language] => ENGLISH
    [profanity] => 
    [title] => The $64 Tomato
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    [pages] => 304
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                    [name] => William Alexander
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            [0] => Biography & Autobiography
            [1] => Humor
            [2] => Personal Memoirs
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    [price] => 2.99
    [id] => 15956928
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    [synopsis] => Bill Alexander had no idea that his simple dream of having a vegetable garden and small orchard in his backyard would lead him into life-and-death battles with groundhogs, webworms, weeds, and weather; midnight expeditions in the dead of winter to dig up fresh thyme; and skirmishes with neighbors who feed the vermin (i.e., deer). Not to mention the vacations that had to be planned around the harvest, the near electrocution of the tree man, the limitations of his own middle-aged body, and the pity of his wife and kids. When Alexander runs (just for fun!) a costbenefit analysis, adding up everything from the live animal trap to the Velcro tomato wraps and then amortizing it over the life of his garden, it comes as quite a shock to learn that it cost him a staggering $64 to grow each one of his beloved Brandywine tomatoes. But as any gardener will tell you, you can't put a price on the unparalleled pleasures of providing fresh food for your family. 
	William Alexander, the author of two critically acclaimed books, lives in New York's Hudson Valley. By day the IT director at a research institute, he made his professional writing debut at the age of fifty-three with a national bestseller about gardening, The $64 Tomato. His second book, 52 Loaves, chronicled his quest to bake the perfect loaf of bread, a journey that took him to such far-flung places as a communal oven in Morocco and an abbey in France, as well as into his own backyard to grow, thresh, and winnow wheat. The Boston Globe called Alexander "wildly entertaining," the New York Times raved that "his timing and his delivery are flawless," and the Minneapolis Star Tribune observed that "the world would be a less interesting place without the William Alexanders who walk among us." A 2006 Quill Book Awards finalist, Alexander won a Bert Greene Award from the IACP for his article on bread, published in Saveur magazine. A passion bordering on obsession unifies all his writing. He has appeared on NPR's Morning Edition and at the National Book Festival in Washington DC and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times op-ed pages, where he has opined on such issues as the Christmas tree threatening to ignite his living room and the difficulties of being organic. Now, in Flirting with French, he turns his considerable writing talents to his perhaps less considerable skills: becoming fluent in the beautiful but maddeningly illogical French language.  Whore in the Bedroom, Horticulturist in the Garden 

"Nature, Mr. Allnutt, is what we are put in this world to rise above."

-Katharine Hepburn to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen

 Bridget arrived for her interview late, breathless, and blond. As we drank herbal tea around the kitchen table, she dug deep into a leather portfolio, emerging with glossy photographs of gardens she had designed for previous clients. Anne ooh-aahed over the photographs, which looked like rather ordinary gardens to me, but to be fair, I was only seeing them peripherally. My eyes were riveted on the hands holding the photographs. Delicate, lightly freckled hands with dirty-filthy-fingernails. Real gardener's fingernails. The effect was startling, at once repulsive and erotic. The phrase whore in the bedroom, horticulturist in the garden popped into my head. I tried to blink it away. When I finally looked up, Bridget smiled and squinted her crinkly green eyes at me. A winkless wink. 

 Had I been caught ogling her dirty hands? After reviewing her credentials and our project, we strolled through the property, Bridget and I falling into lockstep as Anne trailed slightly behind. Passing various anonymous plants and flowers, Bridget would point to what was to me some nameless weedy shrub and exclaim in a breathless whisper something like, "Ah, a beautiful Maximus clitoris." She knew all the botanical names, the Latin rolling off her tongue like steamy profanity in the heat of passion. 

 We hired Bridget on the spot, without interviewing
    [url] => https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/15956928
    [pa] => 
    [subtitle] => How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest
    [publisher] => Algonquin Books
    [purchaseModel] => INSTANT
)