Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz – författare

Provence today is a state of mind as much as a region of France, promising clear skies and bright sun, gentle breezes scented with lavender and wild herbs, scenery alternately bold and intricate, and delicious foods served alongside heady wines. Yet in the mid-twentieth century, a travel guide called the region a “mostly dry, scrubby, rocky, arid land.” How, then, did Provence become a land of desire—an alluring landscape for the American holiday?In A Taste for Provence, historian Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz digs into this question and spins a wonderfully appealing tale of how Provence became Provence. The region had previously been regarded as a backwater and known only for its Roman ruins, but in the postwar era authors, chefs, food writers, visual artists, purveyors of goods, and travel magazines crafted a new, alluring image for Provence. Soon, the travel industry learned that there were many ways to roam—and some even involved sitting still. The promise of longer stays where one cooked fresh food from storied outdoor markets became desirable as American travelers sought new tastes and unadulterated ingredients.Even as she revels in its atmospheric, cultural, and culinary attractions, Horowitz demystifies Provence and the perpetuation of its image today. Guiding readers through books, magazines, and cookbooks, she takes us on a tour of Provence pitched as a new Eden, and she dives into the records of a wide range of visual media—paintings, photographs, television, and film—demonstrating what fueled American enthusiasm for the region. Beginning in the 1970s, Provence—for a summer, a month, or even just a week or two—became a dream for many Americans. Even today as a road well traveled, Provence continues to enchant travelers, armchair and actual alike.

"Based on subtle, imaginative readings of autobiographies, memoirs, fiction and secondary sources, [Campus Life] tells the story of the changing mentalities of American undergraduates over two centuries."—Michael Moffatt, New York Times Book Review

Every generation of college students, no matter how different from its predecessor, has been an enigma to faculty and administration, to parents, and to society in general. Watching today’s students “holding themselves in because they had to get A’s not only on tests but on deans’ reports and recommendations,” Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, author of the highly praised Alma Mater, began to ask, “What has gone wrong—how did we get where we are today?” Campus Life is the result of her search—through college studies, alumni autobiographies, and among students themselves—for an answer.She begins in the post-revolutionary years when the peculiarly American form of college was born, forced in the student-faculty warfare: in 1800, pleasure-seeking Princeton students, angered by disciplinary action, “show pistols . . . and rolled barrels filled with stones along the hallways.” She looks deeply into the campus through the next two centuries, to show us student society as revealed and reflected in the students’ own codes of behavior, in the clubs (social and intellectual), in athletics, in student publications, and in student government.And we begin to notice for the first time, from earliest days till now, younger men, and later young women as well, have entered not a monolithic “student body” but a complex world containing three distinct sub-cultures. We see how from the beginning some undergraduates have resisted the ritualized frivolity and rowdiness of the group she calls “College Men.” For the second group, the “Outsiders,” college was not so much a matter of secret societies, passionate team spirit and college patriotism as a serious preparation for a profession; and over the decades their ranks were joined by ambitious youths from all over rural America, by the first college women, by immigrants, Jews, “townies,” blacks, veterans, and older women beginning or continuing their education. We watch a third subculture of “Rebels”—both men and women – emerging in the early twentieth century, transforming individual dissent into collective rebellion, contending for control of collegiate politics and press, and eventually—in the 1960s—reordering the whole college/university world.Yet, Horowitz demonstrates, in spite of the tumultuous 1960s, in spite of the vast changes since the nineteenth century, the ways in which undergraduates work and play have continued to be shaped by whichever of the three competing subcultures—college men and women, outsiders, and rebels—is in control. We see today’s campus as dominated by the new breed of outsiders (they began to surface in the 1970s) driven to pursue their future careers with a “grim professionalism.” And as faint and sporadic signs emerge of (perhaps) a new activism, and a new attraction to learning for its own sake, we find that Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz has given us, in this study, a basis for anticipated the possible nature of the next campus generation.

A Pulitzer prize-finalist peels back the curtain on an unexplored part of Julia Child's life—the formidable team of six she collaborated with to shape her legendary career.Julia Child's monumental Mastering the Art of French Cooking and iconic television show The French Chef required a team of innovators to bring out her unique presence and personality. Warming Up Julia Child is behind-the-scenes look at this supporting team, revealing how the savvy of these helpers, collaborators, and supporters contributed to Julia's overwhelming success.  Julia is the central subject, but Helen Horowitz has her share the stage with those who aided her work. She reveals that the most important element in Julia Child’s ultimate success was her unusual capacity for forming fruitful alliances, whether it was Paul Child, Simone Beck, Avis DeVoto, Judith Jones and William Koshland (at Knopf), and Ruth Lockwood (at WGBH). Without the contribution of these six collaborators Julia could never have accomplished what she did.    Filled with vivid correspondance, fascinating characters, and the iconic joie de vivre that makes us come back to Julia again and again, Warming Up Julia Child is essential reading for anyone who adores Julia and her legacy.