Books

Generation Chef

Chef Jonah Miller was 24 and in a hurry, so he quit his sous chef job and opened his own restaurant, Huertas, in New York City’s East Village. Generation Chef (with link) is the story of that dream come true – and about the high-stakes, high-speed world of the restaurant chef.

“Stabiner has done more than tell the riveting story of one young chef on the cusp of stardom; she’s plunged us right into the bubbling epicenter of a culinary moment like no other. Witty and well-observed, Generation Chef isn’t just a book for New Yorkers or for the food-obsessed; it’s for anyone anywhere who loves a great read.”
– Tom Colicchio

A Bon Appetit best food book.

A Tasting Table best food book.

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My Girl: Adventures with a teen in training

Here’s a radical concept: Most girls are happy, and so are their mothers. Most girls are not destined for depression, eating disorders, low self-esteem and raging fights with their parents – that’s just a very noisy minority, according to Karen, who wrote what Publisher’s Weekly calls a “charming memoir” about life with her own daughter, Sarah, from age ten to fourteen.
With warmth, humor, and sharp insight, My Girl charts the first years of adolescence—and debunks the prevailing assumption that they bound to be miserable.

“My Girl is a wonderful girl-guide—a gentle road map through the State of Adolescence.” – Jamie Lee Curtis

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All Girls: Single-sex education and why it matters

Proponents of single-sex education warn that falling test scores, faltering self-image, math anxiety, and outright discrimination are all perils that await girls in coed classrooms. But cautionary tales emerge as well from all-girls schools-of rampant eating disorders, single-minded academic competition, and an overly protective environment that leaves girls ill prepared for the demands of college.
Stabiner spent pivotal years with the young women of two very different girls’ schools: Marlborough School, an elite hundred-twelve-year-old prep school in Los Angeles, and The Young Women’s Leadership School in East Harlem, an embattled, controversial experiment within the New York City public school system that aims to give gifted inner-city girls a fighting chance. On both coasts, Stabiner’s subjects are fascinating young women, on the brink of adulthood, whose choices and academic performance will affect the course of their lives.

“Parents committed to bright futures for their daughters, girls who never seriously considered single-sex schools, and public school teachers who mistakenly believe that most girls are doing “just fine” in coeducational classrooms, owe it to themselves to read this powerful book.”
– David Sadker, Ph.D., professor, American University, co-author of Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls

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To Dance With the Devil: The new war on breast cancer

To Dance with the Devil is an unprecedented behind-the-scenes account of the war on one of medicine's most pernicious foes. The product of over three years of research, scores of interviews with the nation's top doctors, policymakers, researchers, and activists, and in-depth reporting on the patients and clinicians who invited the author into their lives, To Dance with the Devil is at once an up-to-the-minute report and a gripping human drama. For a year Karen Stabiner was a steady observer at the innovative UCLA Breast Center, following the progress of Dr. Susan Love, the eminent breast surgeon and author, and a number of Love's patients. From UCLA, Stabiner's narrative spirals out to examine the turbulent national scene: partisan politics and budget crises; pioneering research and dire experimental treatments; managed care and the battle to shape its future; high stakes, high society fund-raising; and the brutally competitive race for answers and dollars.

"To Dance with the Devil is a stunning piece of work: an absolutely lucid, entirely absorbing, and meticulously reported exploration of culture and politics at the cutting edge of medicine." – Joan Didion

A New York Times Notable Book

A Tasting Table best food book.

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Inventing Desire: Inside Chiat/Day

In a field where hunch and instinct mean as much as strategy and research, Chiat/Day produced ads for a quarter of a century that take the consumer by surprise and cross over into mainstream news – the futuristic “1984” commercial for Apple Computer, the Energizer Bunny, a Reebok ad that featured a bungee jumper falling out of a competing brand. Karen Stabiner spent a year at the Venice, California, headquarters of Chiat/Day-with total access. She sat in on client meetings, agency board meetings, pitches, and a variety of shouting matches. She saw a man dance on the ceiling to sell an Energizer battery and learned that crashing two customized $32,000 Nissan sports cars is all in a day’s work. Inventing Desire is the story of a maverick agency trying to keep its edge – and of its owner, who who had to decide whether he preferred to be immortal or irreplaceable.

“An unusual, highly stimulating book. . . a fly-on-the wall’s view of a once-hot company at a precarious moment in its history. . .an absorbing account of the agency’s attempt to answer the perennial: ‘How big can we get before we get bad?’” – The Wall Street Journal

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Courting Fame: The perilous road to women’s tennis stardom

This is a story of gifted kids and proud parents, told as it is lived – at breakneck speed. Athletic little girls start playing tennis at four, competing at seven, making career decisions before they’re old enough to drive. But there are no guarantees -- only the wild temptations of money and fame in a professional sport that didn’t exist when the girls in this book were born. At courtside, in motel rooms around the country, at agonizing family councils back home, Karen Stabiner accompanies young players as they compete on the edge of turning pro.

“Provide(s) matchlessly reported inside detail on the exploitive nature of the show-biz sport at its entry level.” – Kirkus Reviews

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Second Helpings

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