This family cookbook morphed into much more for me during the writing process. It began by contacting friends and family to collect recipes for what I thought would be a simple process. During those conversations and with my own memories, a flood of personal history evolved in my mind. What began as a repository of food recipes became much more to me, and I decided to collect the process in the form of this book, The Diary of a Mad Chef, to also include photos of those people and selected short stories. Food has always been the center of our family's common narrative thread, and I attempted to place the face and the stories of my friends and family with the recipes as I remember them. Along with the feedback and photos from my friends and family, it became a two-year-long effort to compile, edit, and publish this book. The journey has been a magnificent experience for me, and I am grateful to have had the time and opportunity to write this book.

When Carolyn Walton, journalist and mother of four, pitched her first travel story to the Ottawa Citizen in 1984, recounting her adventures in Rio de Janeiro, little did she realize that she was about to embark on a remarkable career that would span the globe--taking her from the jungles of the Amazon to palaces in St. Petersburg, on a pilgrimage in France to ports on the Caribbean, Baltic, Mediterranean, Ionian and Tyrrhenian seas, the Adriatic, North and South Pacific oceans. Prepare to be enlightened and entertained as you tread the path less taken to swim with deadly stingrays in Tahiti, kayak among bulbous- headed belugas in Hudson Bay or deep-sea dive through schools of phosphorescent groupers off Andros Island in the Bahamas. Lapland finds her a guest of the colourful Sami people, dining high above the Arctic Circle on smoked reindeer meat or drinking boiled billy tea by the billabong in Australia’s Outback and truffle hunting in Italy or learning to cook per gli stuzzicini from a famed Italian chef in la cucina of a 1000-year-old castello in Tuscany. The old adage: “Half the fun is getting there” just doesn’t compute when Carolyn’s much anticipated flight to Paris is politically- interrupted or a transfer to the wrong boat in the South Pacific leaves her abandoned on a Fijian island! This collection of tales and misadventures takes the travel lover on an engaging and often humorous journey to the heart of some sixty bucket list destinations around the globe.

From the headline-making, New York Times bestselling author of I Hate Everyone...Starting With Me comes another intimate glimpse into the delightfully hilarious mind of Joan Rivers. When her daughter Melissa gives her a diary for Christmas, at first Joan is horrified—who the hell does Melissa think she is? That fat pig, Bridget Jones? But as Joan, being both beautiful and introspective, begins to record her day-to-day musings, she realizes she has a lot to say. About everything. And everyone, God help them. The result? A no-holds-barred, delightfully vicious and always hilarious look at the everyday life of the ultimate diva. Follow Joan on a family vacation in Mexico and on trips between New York and Los Angeles where she mingles with the stars, never missing a beat as she delivers blistering critiques on current events, and excoriating insights about life, pop culture, and celebrities (from A to D list), all in her relentlessly funny signature style. This is the Diary of a Mad Diva. Forget about Anais Nin, Anne Frank, and Sylvia Plath. For the first time in a century, a diary by someone that’s actually worth reading.

Author, dramatist and satirist, Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852) deeply influenced later Russian literature with his powerful depictions of a society dominated by petty beaurocracy and base corruption. This volume includes both his most admired short fiction and his most famous drama. A biting and frequently hilarious political satire, The Government Inspector has been popular since its first performance and was regarded by Nabokov as the greatest Russian play every written. The stories gathered here, meanwhile, range from comic to tragic and describe the isolated lives of low-ranking clerks, lunatics and swindlers. They include Diary of a Madman, an amusing but disturbing exploration of insanity; Nevsky Prospect, a depiction of an artist besotted with a prostitute; and The Overcoat, a moving consideration of poverty that powerfully influenced Dostoevsky and later Russian literature.

These two modern classics by the great Japanese novelist Junichiro Tanizaki, both utilize the diary form to explore the authority that love and sex have over all. In The Key, a middle-aged professor plies his wife of thirty years with any number of stimulants, from brandy to a handsome young lover, in order to reach new heights of pleasure. Their alternating diaries record their separate adventures, but whether for themselves or each other becomes the question. Diary of a Mad Old Man records, with alternating humor and sadness, seventy-seven-year-old Utsugi’s discovery that even his stroke-ravaged body still contains a raging libido, especially in the unwitting presence of his chic, mysterious daughter-in-law.

One of Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2015 From Geto Boys legend and renowned storyteller Scarface, comes a passionate memoir about how hip-hop changed the life of a kid from the south side of Houston, and how he rose to the top-and ushered in a new generation of rap dominance. Scarface is the celebrated rapper whose hits include "On My Block," "Mind Playing Tricks on Me" and "Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta" (made famous in the cult film Office Space). The former president of Def Jam South, he's collaborated with everyone from Kanye West, Ice Cube and Nas, and had many solo hits such as "Guess Who's Back" feat. Jay-Z and "Smile" feat. Tupac. But before that, he was a kid from Houston in love with rock-and-roll, listening to AC/DC and KISS. In Diary of a Madman, Scarface shares how his world changed when he heard Run DMC for the first time; how he dropped out of school in the ninth grade and started selling crack; and how he began rapping as the new form of music made its way out of New York and across the country. It is the account of his rise to the heights of the rap world, as well as his battles with his own demons and depression. Passionately exploring and explaining the roots and influences of rap culture, Diary of a Madman is the story of hip-hop-the music, the business, the streets, and life on the south side Houston, Texas.

“Kwame Onwuachi’s story shines a light on food and culture not just in American restaurants or African American communities but around the world.” —Questlove By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened—and closed—one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had sold drugs in New York and been shipped off to rural Nigeria to “learn respect.” He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars made from selling candy on the subway and starred on Top Chef. Through it all, Onwuachi’s love of food and cooking remained a constant, even when, as a young chef, he was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the food world can be for people of color. In this inspirational memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age; a powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest account of chasing your dreams—even when they don’t turn out as you expected.