See buying choices for this item to see if it's one of the millions that are eligible for Amazon Prime.

Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess and over 300,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle � Amazon�s new wireless reading device. Learn more

14 used & new from $2.00

See All Buying Options

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

Share with Friends

Share your own customer images

Search inside another edition of this book

Start reading Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess on your Kindle in under a minute. Don�t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess [BARGAIN PRICE] (Hardcover)

by Gael Greene (Author) "ELVIS PRESLEY WAS COMING TO TOWN TO DO TWO SHOWS AT OLYMPIA Stadium..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Blue Skies, Craig Claiborne (more...)

3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.

4 new from $4.29 10 used from $2.00

This is a bargain book and quantities are limited. Bargain books are new but could include a small mark from the publisher and an Amazon.com price sticker identifying them as such. See details.

Also Available in:	List Price:	Our Price:	Other Offers:
Kindle Edition (Kindle Book)		$9.99
Hardcover (illustrated edition)			91 used & new from $0.44
Paperback	$13.99	$10.97	72 used & new from $1.00
Audio Download (Audible.com)	$24.98	$14.98
Audio CD (Abridged,Audiobook)	$24.98	$24.98	41 used & new from $1.64

Special Offers and Product Promotions

Explore more great deals on 1000's of titles in our Bargain Book store.

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise

by Ruth Reichl

4.2 out of 5 stars (136) $10.88

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany (Vintage)

by Bill Buford

4.2 out of 5 stars (171) $10.17

My Life in France

by Julia Child

4.6 out of 5 stars (145)

Kitchen Confidential Updated Ed: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.)

by Anthony Bourdain

4.2 out of 5 stars (612) $10.15

The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food

by Judith Jones

4.0 out of 5 stars (23) $10.17

› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
As the title of her longtime New York magazine column (which ran from 1968 to 2000) suggests, Greene was indeed an "Insatiable Critic" and not just where food was concerned. Her fun memoir spices up the standard chronicle of food supped and wine sipped with breathless descriptions of sexual trysts, travel tales and signature fashions. Greene's sensual appetite was voracious and her affairs as abundant and indulgent as her meals; her more famous lovers included Elvis Presley, Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. With chapter titles like "Splendor in the Foie Gras" and "Bonfire of the Foodies," the book brims with vivid and gluttonously gossipy prose, though it's occasionally repetitive, especially regarding the recent growth of "foodie" culture. At heart a singular story of Greene's gustatory and personal development, the book is also a history of culinary culture since the 1960s. She mentions world events that were occurring as she pursued her sybaritic lifestyle; describes her idols, contemporaries and famous chefs; and depicts spectacular meals throughout France, New York and beyond. This delicious read tells the story of America's haute cuisine awakening as written by the woman who had a seat at the table. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
In this freewheelingly sensuous autobiography, restaurant critic and novelist Greene casts the path of her life as an education of her appetites. Born into an unexceptional postwar midwestern home, Greene knew little about taste. Her hunger for good food led her from a successful career as a magazine writer to a coveted position as one of Manhattan's most respected restaurant critics. Simultaneous development into womanhood followed a no-less-stellar trajectory. Her male conquests, begun in earnest when she gained access in Detroit to a visiting Elvis Presley's hotel suite, continue through a host of celebrities and a remarkable doomed marriage. Her culinary appetite takes her to France and a vision of perfection at Fernand Point's temple of French gastronomy. Greene had the great good fortune to become a food critic just as American culture was awakening to a newfound infatuation with all tastes French, Italian, and Chinese, just as the same culture liberated women to revel in other appetites their bodies might hunger after. Greene joyfully and unabashedly celebrates both food and sex, having her own way with both. Recipes (for food) included. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Warner Books (April 4, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0446576999
ASIN: B000KJTOOE
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces

Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #469,293 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)
Browse and search another edition of this book.

First Sentence:
ELVIS PRESLEY WAS COMING TO TOWN TO DO TWO SHOWS AT OLYMPIA Stadium. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Blue Skies, Craig Claiborne, Four Seasons, Paul Bocuse, James Beard, Clay Felker, Joe Baum, Burt Reynolds, Quilted Giraffe, Julia Child, Park Avenue, Women's Wear, Doctor Love, Jamie Gillis, San Francisco, Sirio Maccioni, Gael Greene, Helen Gurley Brown, Misty Beethoven, Box Tree, Canal Bar, East Hampton, Ground Floor, New Paltz

New!
Concordance | Text Stats

Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 15 books:

Blue Skies, No Candy by Gael Greene in Front Matter, and page 256
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong on page 194
Doctor Love by Gael Greene on page 256
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby by Tom Wolfe on page 63
How to be a Jewish Mother (revised) by Dan Greenburg on page 133

See all 15 books this book cites

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	89% buy the item featured on this page: Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess 3.1 out of 5 stars (25)
	3% buy Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise 4.2 out of 5 stars (136) $10.88
	3% buy Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany (Vintage) 4.2 out of 5 stars (171) $10.17
	3% buy Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table 4.3 out of 5 stars (112) $10.85

Explore similar items

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

(What's this?)

Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).

food(30)

memoir(24)

foodie book(22)

food critic(12)

foodie(9)

hot erotica(8)

erotic romance(6)

erotica(6)

cooking(9)

kinky(5)

allison hobbs(4)

Help others find this product — tag it for Amazon search

No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?

Customer Reviews

25 Reviews

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

Average Customer Review

3.1 out of 5 stars (25 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent insider (really inside) look at NY haute cuisine. Buy It., May 13, 2006

By	B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess (Hardcover)

`Insatiable' is a collection of anecdotal memoirs by Ms. Gael Greene of the overshadowingly broad brimmed hats and long time food writer and restaurant critic of `New York' magazine. While the 51 chapters do touch on Ms. Greene's life before `New York', they generally stay very close to their `New York' wellspring, her column, named `The Insatiable Gourmet' by magazine editor in chief, Clay Felker.

The most immediate comparison which comes to mind is to the three volumes of memoirs by current `Gourmet' editor in chief, Ruth Reichl who, for several years, sat in Craig Claiborne's chair as principle restaurant reviewer for `The New York Times' and whose most recent book, `Garlic and Sapphires' deals entirely with her `New York Times' restaurant reviews and her tactics for maintaining her anonymity while in the hunt for excellence at New York's finer eateries. And, as similar as these two women's careers may be, the differences make both bodies of work that much more interesting.

While Reichl, the younger of the two by at least a decade, grew up in New York City and learned French at a very early age, her professional culinary journalistic career was shaped on the west coast, firmly under the influence of the American food vanguard lead by the California vintners, Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, and Wolfgang Puck. Greene grew up in provincial Detroit, but had her culinary instincts formed by the emerging community of French restaurants in New York City. Her center of culinary gravity was in the dining rooms, kitchens, and cellars of the great French culinary establishment. She even admits that she came late to the California culinary movement. To her credit, as soon as she had her first experience of Alice Waters' cuisine at `Chez Panisse', she recognized that there was something important going on by the Pacific coast.

Reichl's first two volumes of memoirs are more strictly biographical than `Insatiable' in that they are strictly chronological. Reichl's revelations about her life are also unusual to me, at the time, for the remarkable candor about her sexual life. Madame Reichl was a Den Mother compared to Ms. Greene, whose title refers not only to her culinary appetites, but to her sexual appetites as well. I won't dwell on this much, but her exploits make me and most average Americans feel like monks or nuns in comparison.

These sexual exploits include dozens of famous figures from the culinary world, but they also include several notables from Hollywood. As a hint, I will reveal that Ms. Greene tells the tales of how she landed in bed with two very big leading men, both of whom appeared together on the cover of `Time' magazine. And yet, Ms. Greene can be remarkably circumspect about the details of many liaisons.

It is interesting to see the difference in reaction to some of the major figures both have met. Danny Kaye appears in both narratives, however, he is a much bigger part in Ms. Greene's story, as does James Beard, Julia Child, Craig Claiborne, Pierre Franey, and M.F.K. Fisher, as Ms. Greene was able to encounter all these people while they were still at or near their prime, unlike Ms. Reichl, who did not arrive in the `big time' at the `Times' until most of these people were retired or gone. The stories regarding Danny Kaye are especially nice, as I have been pining for more information on his culinary abilities ever since I read Ms. Reichl's report of a dinner he prepared in his custom build `kitchen theatre'.

Ms. Greene also fills in a lot of information on some of the more romantically interesting figures in the culinary world. For example, when one reads other accounts of the lives of `Le Bernardin' founders, Gilbert and Maguy LeCoze, you are left with the feeling that their closeness can only be explained by a particularly `unnatural' sexual relation. Miss Gael assures us in no uncertain terms that both Gilbert and Maguy were decidedly conventional (At least for young French natives) in their sexual behavior, each with their own one or more partners, including, for Gilbert, Ms. Greene herself now and then. She also sheds light on the fact that suspicions to the contrary, Pierre Franey was a complete heterosexual, with no erotic connection to culinary colleague, the well-known homosexual, Craig Claiborne.

One feature of New York dining on which Ms. Greene and Ms. Reichl agree is that most of the high end venues are far too inclined to give preferential treatment to favorite customers, most of which are celebrities. One of the most disagreeable cases appears in the chapter about the literary watering hole, `Elaine's' which became popular among celebs almost by accident, when `Harper's' editor Nelson Aldrich (not even Nelson Algren), wandered in and stayed awhile, bringing a few other literary luminaries along in later visits. And, while we are less likely to be inconvenienced by this, this is just as true of Parisian venues as those in the Big Apple.

Like Ms. Reichl, Ms. Greene sprinkles in a few recipes here and there, after every second or third chapter. These are interesting, but I found her passing remarks about dishes within her text to be far more evocative, as when one New York maestro filled a baked potato with creamed chipped beef and how Gilbert LeCoze prepared such simple fish dishes, because he never received the kind of training which showed him how to do elaborate preparations (Under Eric Ripert, `Le Bernardin' is still a temple to simple, fresh fish cooking).

While Ms. Reichl's last book may be more interesting to the serious foodie as it deals in much more detail with the specific restaurants, reviews, and events surrounding her researches, Ms. Greene's book has far more interesting and far more lascivious information about the lives and loves of the culinary great in New York and France.

A delicious tart of a read!

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Bitter Disappointment, September 6, 2006

By	Fran Sepler "inhaler of great books" (Minnesota United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess (Hardcover)

I absorb "foodie" books at the rate that some breathe. Reichl, Bourdain, Child, Buxton and others are the source of hours of fond distraction from my too-busy-to-do-anything life and my aspirations to understand food the way I understand my professional work -- intuitively, technically and personally.

I had read that this book was more of a bawdy personal history than others, but I always adore the personal details of the writers, and am hardly a prude. Nevertheless, I could hardly muster an ounce of empathy for the gratuitous sexual self-objectification of the author who viewed restaurants more as stars in a social strata than producers of cuisine. I did not care about her tortured relationship with a porn star, whom she fed and bedded on her employer's dime. I grew exasperated as she ended a chapter about three marriages with a confession that she wrote it without understanding the point, and still, after writing it and choosing to include it in her book, she did not. The simple reality is that a writer is speaking to a reader, and Ms. Green's reader appeared to be...Ms. Green. While it is apparent that others enjoyed this book, I would suspect that a day with "Garlic and Sapphires" would disabuse anyone of the notion that this is a delightful memoir, and instead expose it for the indulgence that it is.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars empty, empty, June 7, 2007

By	Natasha (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess (Paperback)

If Reichl's memoirs were a nourishing meal, then Greene's is a bag of chips. Reichl's trilogy about her life in food is ultimately about developing relationships, and discovering how to make a meaningful life.

Greene's book, in contrast, reads as a series of lists 1) foods she has eaten 2) men she has slept with 3) celebrities she has known. There is no real character development, nor any personal insights.

True, she has enjoyed amazing, sumptious meals, but to what end? There is no meaning to her life beyond the endless quest for rich meals on her employer's dime. Her sexual appetite, although clearly prodigious, leads her to make empty choice after empty choice. Some people will wish that they shared Greene's luck that allowed her to live a completely self-indulgent life. But most sensible people will be grateful that they haven't haven't wasted every moment pursuing nothing.

An empty life leads to an empty book--a bit ironic considering the title. Reichl's books, though far less sexual, are fare more sensual and satisfying.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 25 customer reviews...

Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard to put down
I enjoyed this light, gossipy book, although I don't have an extreme fondness for cooking. It was hard to put down at times. Gael does a "tell all" on herself.

Published 4 months ago by Toogie M. McIntosh

5.0 out of 5 stars Delectable, delicious, delightful, and great voyeristic fun
Well, maybe you need to be 'a certain age', maybe you need to remember The Colony or have had the desire to get closer to the bone of New York's glamorous power by literally... Read more

Published 6 months ago by Biggest Fan

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad
My expectations weren't high and it still didn't meet them. This is such a bad book on so many levels.

Published 18 months ago by Jason Brink

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad Appetites
Whoa, this badly written, unsexy epic could have used some serious editing. I'm surprised, since I've enjoyed GG's witty reviews, but there's hardly an amusing line in this tome,... Read more

Published 19 months ago by G. Shepherd

2.0 out of 5 stars Edit Me Please- An Excess of Ego
Will I ever finnish this tedious tome? An excess of ego and pointless information. Ruth Reichel's exsquiste "Comfort Me with Apples" benefitted from a genius of editing, I... Read more

Published 24 months ago by Georgiann Dogolo

1.0 out of 5 stars Only Insatiable if you enjoy name dropping after name dropping
I was so looking forward to another food critic's life story like Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphire - one of the best books I have ever read. Read more

Published on July 8, 2007 by Diva Denise

1.0 out of 5 stars FLIES IN THIS SOUP
THERE IS GOOD SCHMUTZ AND BAD SCHMUTZ. THIS BOOK IS EITHER FICTIONAL, OR BAD SCHMUTZ. THERE ARE GLARING ERRORS TO BOOT. Read more

Published on July 4, 2007 by ZYBYSKO

1.0 out of 5 stars an insatiably smug ego
I found this so disappointing after "Garlic and Sapphires". Now Ruth maynot be entirely the lovely soft warm and cosy food writer this book presents her to be, but I am completely... Read more

Published on May 9, 2007 by J. Holland

5.0 out of 5 stars Tasty Behind-the-Scenes With a Side of Sex
Anyone who works in the food industry and loves sexy gossip will enjoy this inside look at the business of food.

Published on May 8, 2007 by Silvia Bridger

4.0 out of 5 stars Sex, Food and maybe a little too much honesty
I think you'd have to be or have been involved in the food biz to enjoy this book as much as I did. The author is quite smart and sassy and knows the food industry better than... Read more

Published on April 5, 2007 by Amy Reiley

› See all 25 customer reviews...

.jsOffDisplayBlock { display: block; } .jsOffDisplayInline { display: inline; } .jsOffVisibility { visibility: visible; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jsOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; }