5/9 Seattle - Book signing and Seattle Brisket Experience dinner. Ticketed event, sold out.
5/14 New York - Book launch at Barnes & Noble in Union Square with Anthony Bourdain. Public Event
5/15 Brooklyn - Brisket party by BrisketTown. Sold out.
5/17 Dallas - Private party
5/19 Chicago - Book signing at Macy's with Anthony Bourdain at noon. Public event.
5/22 Austin - Book signing at Bookpeople with BBQ from Micklethwait Craft Meats and beer from Saint Arnold. Public event.
5/24 San Antonio - Book signing at Two Bros. Barbecue Market from 6-9. Public event.
5/25 Dallas - Book signing and barbecue at Four Corners Brewery. VIP ticket or general admission.
5/30 Atlanta - Book signing and dinner at Fox Bros. BBQ. Ticketed event.
6/15 Houston - Book signing at Leibman's Fine Foods from 1-3, then at River Oaks Bookstore from 4-6. Public events.
6/17 Dallas - Book Signing at the Preston/Park Barnes & Noble at 7:00. Public event.
6/18 Cleveland - Dinner at Greenhouse Tavern at 6:00. Ticketed event.
6/20 Fort Worth - Book Signing at TCU Bookstore at 5:00. Public event.
6/21 Oklahoma City - Book Signing at Full Circle Bookstore at 3:00. Public event.
8/22 Dallas - Book Signing at Lockhart Smokehouse from 11-2.
8/27 Dallas - Book Signing at the Dubliner on Greenville Ave. from 5-7.
- BBQ Snob
Looks like a great book and schedule! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteYou SOB! You come to Houston in the ! week for the last four years I'm not here! ##@$^$%##@%#^@^!^#$^#Q@$^%#Q@^#
ReplyDeleteNext time :)
New York City!?!?
ReplyDeleteSee you back here in T.E.X.A.S.
Any plans to make a stop in Louisiana??
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the party at Four Corners yesterday. Wish I could have made it out for the entire soiree. Best of luck with the book!
ReplyDeleteSnob - what are the details for Houston event?
ReplyDeleteI disliked this book SO much. If you're interested, there are at least three better books (excerpted from my amazon review, to save other people money):
ReplyDeleteSmokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country
BBQ USA: 425 Fiery Recipes from All Across America
Peace, Love, & Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue
At the broadest level, the writing in Prophets has all of the passion, style, and enthusiasm of a Yelp review, and many of the grammatical errors and typos. This book is hundreds of pages of "I went here, I ate this. The pie was good. The brisket was disappointing. Moving on." With a few exceptions, it's difficult to tell that the author spent much time talking to the owners, fellow patrons, or folks from the towns. Compared to Smokestack Lightning, the writing is just dull. There's no overriding narrative here or even some good individual stories. Just a glutton and his friend packing it in day after day. I couldn't tell you a single thing I learned from this book.
All of this would be ok if there were recipes. BBQ USA is a huge book with tons of recipes that still manages to be a better read than Prophets. You get the feeling that Steven Raichlen spent the time with the folks he visited, swapped stories, and observed their operations with a researcher's curiosity, not a collector's desire to check something off his list.
What makes the books above better than Prophets is that the authors are passionate: passionate about food as culture and history, passionate about their own cooking, barbecue, and sharing their love with others. You get absolutely none of that love or passion from this book. I can't imagine what the intended audience is for this book -- as the author admits repeatedly, he writes his reviews based on a single visit. So it's not for cooks, it's not for people who like travelogues, and it certainly isn't for people who want to go off and explore the Texas BBQ scene on their own - since there's scant details other than the names of the places and the reviews are so thin.
I should mention that there's a section at the back of the book that profiles the "pitmasters" featured in the narrative. This seems like a curious editorial choice - why not include their stories (scant as they are) inline with the text? And why list the components of their rubs without listing the recipe or ratios (especially since most rubs are salt, pepper, and 1 or 2 other things, this seems important).
Finally, I have to remark that there's a strong revulsion factor here. I'm a good sized American male and I can't imagine eating what the author claims to have eaten in a single day, no matter how much I liked it (or how much time I put into cooking it, for that matter). This is back to the checklist nature of the book: I went here, I ate this. I knew I shouldn't eat more, but somehow I managed. And then I managed again. Either he's leaving out the treadmill he kept in the back of his Audi or the vast amounts of laxatives he was downing at every turn. Or he's dead now. Those are the only possible explanations. Nothing has made me want to eat barbecue LESS than reading this book.
Hi there IB, or Arnold Irving from Chicago. I saw your review on Amazon already. Thanks so much for bringing it over to my blog as well. I would agree on your three choices for barbecue books. All are great reads. I'd also add that your review sounds like it comes from a frequent Yelper as well. Pardon me if I put more stock into what the Wall Street Journal said of the book. It went something like "The soul of Texas lies quietly in its back roads and rural towns and in the empty, perfectly flat plains sitting under the wide sky. Daniel Vaughn's quest for barbecue has sent him out to these far-flung places, along miles and miles of highway, and the resulting narrative evokes that soul more accurately than anything else I have ever read."
ReplyDeleteDaniel Vaughn's patience, kindness and good will are abundant, both in his response to IB and especially in his book and blog posts. Having read Dan's book, I wholeheartedly recommend it. I love BBQ and travel the state of Texas; now I know what to look for, how to order and even how to eat what I'm getting. As far as IB's critique goes, Mr. Vaughn does not pretend to be writing the Great American Novel; instead, he is giving us an introduction to Texas BBQ, which I enjoyed.
ReplyDelete!@#$%^
ReplyDeleteSo now that Daniel has moved on to Texas Monthly is FCGB dead, with only one review of a Texas Q joint posted since February, 2013? Snob, we hardly knew 'ye.
ReplyDeleteHello Mr. Vaughan
ReplyDeleteI was hoping you could check out my BBQ blog. It's barbecueusa.blogspot.com. Thanks!
I'm thinking IB is really LB... Leslie Brenner!!! Arnold Irving is an elaborate smokescreen (elaborate for a simple mind like myself).
ReplyDeleteBRENNERRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-SRC
IB is what you get for rating some places one or two stars. A close relative of his perhaps? Otherwise it makes no sense.
ReplyDelete