Julia Child was born in Pasadena, California. She graduated from Smith College and worked for the OSS during World War II; afterward she lived in Paris, studied at the Cordon Bleu, and taught cooking with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, with whom she wrote the first volume ofMastering the Art of French Cooking(1961). In 1963, Boston's WGBH launchedThe French Cheftelevision series, which made Julia Child a national celebrity, earning her the Peabody Award in 1965 and an Emmy in 1966. Several public television shows and numerous cookbooks followed. She died in 2004.
Alex Prud'hommeis Julia Child's great-nephew and the coauthor of her autobiography,My Life in France,which was adapted into the movieJulie & Julia. He is also the author ofThe Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century, Hydrofracking: What Everyone Needs to Know,andThe Cell Game,and he is the coauthor (with Michael Cherkasky) ofForewarned: Why the Government Is Failing to Protect Us--and What We Must Do to Protect Ourselves. Prud'homme's journalism has appeared inThe New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Time,andPeople.