Latest news with #SamuelAshworth


Washington Post
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
What to read this summer
Summer is the perfect time to dive into a new book, and the Post's Book World section has compiled recommendations for every type of reader. Today, Book World editors Jacob Brogan and John Williams talk to host Elahe Izadi about the new releases and old titles they suggest digging into this summer. Here's the list of books mentioned in today's episode: 'The Death and Life of August Sweeney' by Samuel Ashworth 'Bleak House' by Charles Dickens 'Mark Twain' by Ron Chernow 'Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America' by Sam Tanenhaus 'Is a River Alive?' by Robert MacFarlane 'King of Ashes' by S.A. Cosby 'Spent' by Alison Bechdel 'Crush' by Ada Calhoun 'The Book of Records' by Madeleine Thien 'The Dry Season' by Melissa Febos 'Sloppy' by Rax King 'Flashlight' by Susan Choi 'Second Life' by Amanda Hess 'Mood Machine' by Liz Pelly Today's show was produced by Emma Talkoff, with help from Lucas Trevor. It was edited by Ariel Plotnick, and mixed by Sean Carter. Subscribe to The Washington Post here.


Washington Post
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
A famous chef's autopsy tells the story of his career
Samuel Ashworth's 'The Death and Life of August Sweeney' is a novel concerned with viscera and the flesh. It begins with Sweeney — a gargantuan chef, of considerable appetites — discovering the source of a wretched odor oozing from the walk-in refrigerator of his celebrated restaurant: It's a pig's head, from the beast he butchered yesterday, carelessly packaged and refrigerated by a trainee chef. 'Even tightly wrapped in Saran the jowl had sloughed off the cheekbones,' Ashworth writes. 'The lower jaw which in life had pulverized black walnuts, chestnuts, and acorns, looked melted; all up the back of its head, pustules wept. The lovely pink of its skin had gone the gray of mortar.' In no time, Sweeney, like the pig, will be cut up and taken apart.