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This is not a credible memoir but rather a cornball fiction piece based on questionable memories of events that happened beginning 63 years ago. Reichl writes the book like an airport novel, heavy on quippy dialogue that, at age 71, she presents as precise back and forth conversations she remembers exactly, despite the fact they took place decades ago. The book is filled with obvious exaggerations that stretch credibility, as exemplified within the first pages when she states she prepared a suckling pig for her family at age 10 (with no former cooking experience) and did this by reading a recipe in Gourmet cookbook that just happened to be laying around because she'd "begged" her dad to buy it for 50 cents. She says the sucking pig happened to be purchased by her mother, whom Reichl describes as a typical 1950's housewife whose cooking was otherwise limited to Campbell's soup recipes. Reichl's presentation of herself careens back and forth-- one minute a genius cooking prodigy, the next a self-described neglectful workaholic who consistently put her career and burning ambition ahead of husband and child. In the next breath she offers a bashful and self-deprecating description of herself as she fields the editor job offer from the eminent Si Newhouse during which she protests she is not qualified yet for some mysterious reason he insists on pursuing her. No where is there any accountability for how she ran Gourmet Magazine into the ground, causing the same Si Newhouse ten years later to pull the plug and abruptly show her the door with a 24-hour notice. I can now understand why Gourmet Magazine failed so spectacularly, considering the tremendous resources she squandered. Indeed, the only truthful passage in this book is when she protests over several pages to Si Newhouse that she wasn't in any way qualified for the job.