Legendary Dinners: From Grace Kelly to Jackson Pollock

Lavishly illustrated with period paintings and photographs, as well as reconstructed table settings and plating, this handsome book presents twenty meals that were served by or in honor of such figures as Napoleon, Frida Kahlo, Coco Chanel, the Apollo 11 astronauts, and Michelle Obama.

German magazine editor Anne Petersen is able in some cases to work from actual menus that were used, such as the wedding breakfast celebrating the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to Phillip Mountbatten. For others, she has access to published recipes, as in the case of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, who enjoyed entertaining the likes of Peggy Guggenheim in East Hampton. Just as often she works with contemporaneous records and recipes to recreate the food of Truman Capote's famous Black & White Ball, Claude Monet's favorite dishes from Giverny, and exuberant parties of the artists of the Bauhaus.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.