On Demand
Survival Kit Archive
May 2003
Ruth Reichl
Sunday, May 25, 2003
Ruth Reichl has always seen the world in terms of food. In her two memoirs, Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me With Apples, the important events and people in her life are always defined by the meals that accompanied them. And she transformed the art of restaurant reviewing, in her decades at the New York Times and the L.A. Times, by emphasizing the whole dining experience, not just individual dishes. Let’s find out what the editor-in-chief of Gourmet Magazine is packing in her Survival Kit, or perhaps I should say “Survival picnic basket”.
Nikki Giovanni
Sunday, May 18, 2003
Nikki Giovanni has always forged her own path through life. She self-published her first volumes of poetry, Black Feeling, Black Talk and Black Judgement, because they were considered out of the mainstream at that time. And as a result, she became a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960’s. Over the years she's developed a loyal readership for the 2 dozen adult and children's books that followed; she became a single mother by choice long before it became fashionable, and in recent years she's revealed her fight against cancer (which she's faced with courage and humor.) Let’s see what this iconoclastic, independent woman has put into her Survival Kit.
David Halberstam
Sunday, May 11, 2003
David Halberstam won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his reporting on the Vietnam War; his book The Best and the Brightest is considered the definitive work on that conflict. His other books, including The Powers That Be, The Reckoning, The Breaks of the Game, The Fifties, The Children, and War in a Time of Peace, have dissected the civil rights movement, U.S. foreign policy, professional and amateur sports, the power of the media and the automobile industry. What does this man, who has examined the workings of almost every aspect of American society, consider essential to his cultural survival? Let’s ask him.
Roz Chast
Friday, May 02, 2003
Roz Chast is this week’s adventurer; for over twenty years she’s explored the foibles of home and family life in her inimitable drawings. In the process she has changed the way we think of the cartoon form. Her work can be found in almost every issue of the New Yorker magazine and several volumes of her cartoons have been published, including Childproof and Cartoons about Parents and Children. Ms. Chast has lived in and around New York City for most of her life, and I really wanted to know what she would put in her cultural Survival Kit for a lengthy exile from her hometown.