Home Books Buy Appearances Op-eds Reviews & Interviews Bio Contact & Media
     
Interviews

NPR's Morning Edition

The Restaurant Guys

NPR's Weekend Edition

The Diane Rehm Show

CBC Sunday Magazine

Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio

The Joe Gardener Show

The History of Fresh Produce

Reviews of
Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World

Wall Street Journal

Air Mail

Daily Kos

Kirkus Reviews

Booklist

Bookpage

Library Journal

The Washington Free Beacon

Reviews of
Flirting with French

The New York Times Book Review

The Wall Street Journal

Counterpunch

Kirkus Reviews

Slate

Minneapolis Star Tribune

I Know What You Should Read

Girl with Her Head in a Book

Salisbury Post

Reviews of
52 Loaves

The Boston Globe

Kirkus Reviews

Library Journal

Minneapolis Star Tribune

The Oregonian

The Richmond Times-Dispatch

BookPage

Chocolate & Zucchini

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Chester County Dwell

Reviews of
The $64 Tomato

The New York Times Style Magazine

The Louisville Courrier-Journal

The Washington Post

New York Times Home Section

New York Observer

Charlotte Observer

The State (South Carolina)

Newsday

Life Magazine

Publisher's Weekly

San Francisco Chronicle

The Louisville Courrier-Journal
This is the gift book of the year...The $64 Tomato is a wonderful gift to share with those who appreciate a good laugh. You could comfortably give it to your mother or the church organist, for there is nothing to offend. For many readers, the humor will seem gentle, in a Saturday Evening Post or Reader's Digest way. Readers who have decided to try "growing a vegetable or two" will, instead, laugh uproariously at author William Alexander's tales of squirrel armies, organic growing and a woodchuck that would make Dr. Frankenstein proud.

Portions of the book deal with the acquisition of a woefully untended home and its subsequent restoration, and homeowners will chortle with delight to know that these nightmares occur to other folks, too. The good times really roll, however, when Alexander decides to convert two hilly acres into a sumptuous, picturesque vegetable garden and orchard. The garden was a joyous dream to plan, as most are, but in execution it becomes a nightmare of Brobdingnagian proportions. Clay is not soil. Weeds love turned earth. Orchards can be decimated overnight. Wildlife are relentless. Alexander battles nature in pursuit of a dream, season after season, unbowed by foul weather and foul tempers.

He tells a rather touching tale of his father, who grew delicious apples organically at their home in a New York borough: ripe, perfect fruits bursting with healthy goodness, all grown in the back yard. Alexander's attempts to replicate this miracle from his childhood are hysterical, and the punch line at the end is as touching as it is uproarious.

Anyone who is obsessed with gardening will understand how one can spend $64 growing a tomato; the price of this book seems a bargain in comparison.