Just finished ALICE WATERS  AND CHEZ PANISSE, by Thomas McNamee (Penguin $16) 

The first half, I thought, was alternately interesting and repetitious, although easy to read and contained some wonderful recipes.  By the second half, all the "characters"....long time friends and chefs, etc....., are introduced and wonderfully described.......and the history of this woman and her restaurant comes into full bloom. This story just shows the amazing impact that one person, totally determined, can have not only on our own culture and eating habits, but of those throughout the world.  Alice Waters is a force of nature, just as surely as the wind and the rain. As the book says, she is romantic, impractical, eccentric, and brilliant in the making of a food revolution. Anyone who loves to cook, with good, fresh food, would love this book. Nancy should run a trip to Berkeley so we could all eat at Chez Panisse once in our lifetimes. 

-- Eve

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ARDENT SPIRITS

by Reynolds Price

(Scribner $35.00)

A wonderful memoir that takes the reader into his life during the fifties in Oxford, where he was studying for three years as a Rhodes Scholar, then into the beginnings of his more than fifty year teaching career at Duke University. It's an intriguing glimpse into a world and era unseen by most of us. And Reynolds's prose is delightful. I loved every word of it. -- Mari Lu