Kaminsky, Peter 1947(?)-

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Kaminsky, Peter 1947(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1947; married; children: two. Education: Princeton University, BA.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Brooklyn, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Ecco Publishing, 10 E. 53rd St., New York, NY 10010.

CAREER:

Television producer and writer.

WRITINGS:

Fly Fishing for Dummies, IDG Books Worldwide (Foster City, CA), 1998.

(With Jim McCann) Stop and Smell the Roses: Lessons from Business and Life, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Peggy Fleming) The Long Program: Skating toward Life's Victories, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1999.

(With John Madden) John Madden's Ultimate Tailgating, Gramercy (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Gray Kunz) The Elements of Taste, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2001.

The Moon Pulled Up an Acre of Bass: A Flyrodder's Odyssey at Montauk Point, Hyperion/Theia (New York, NY), 2001.

Fishing for Dummies: An Illustrated Reference for the Rest of Us, Courage Books (Philadelphia, PA), 2002.

The Fly Fisherman's Guide to the Meaning of Life: What a Lifetime on the Water Has Taught Me about Love, Work, Food, Sex, and Getting up Early, Rodale (Emmaus, PA), 2002.

(With Egi Maccioni) The Maccioni Family Cookbook, photographs by Elizabeth Zeschin, Stewart, Tabori & Chang (New York, NY), 2003.

(With Sheila Lukins) Celebrate!: Cookbook, photographs by Melanie Acevado, Workman (New York, NY), 2003.

(Editor) Fishing with My Father: A Literary Companion, Chamberlain Bros. (New York, NY), 2005.

Pig Perfect: Encounters with Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2005.

American Waters: The Fly-Fishing Journeys of a Native Son, Stewart, Tabori & Chang (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Teddy Atlas) Atlas: A Life on the Ropes, Ecco (New York, NY), 2006.

(With Michel Richard and Susie Heller) Happy in the Kitchen: The Craft of Cooking, the Art of Eating, foreword by Thomas Keller, Artisan (New York, NY), 2006.

(With Fabio Trabocchi) Cucina of Le Marche: Recipes from the Kitchens and Traditions of Italy's Most Undiscovered Region, Ecco (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor of articles, especially on food and the outdoors, to magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, New York, Food & Wine, Outdoor Life, and Sports Afield. Author of regular column for the New York Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

In The Moon Pulled Up an Acre of Bass: A Flyrodder's Odyssey at Montauk Point Peter Kaminsky celebrates a yearly ritual: the running of vast schools of striped bass off Montauk Point, New York, and the fishermen and women who follow them. Kaminsky describes the hunt for the fish in what People Weekly writer Jack Friedman called "a joyous, beautifully written evocation of time and place." Combining observations of the fly-fishing guides, the fish, and those who seek to catch them, Kaminsky gives an insider's view of this fishing paradise. In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer observed that "most Eastern fly rodders will revel in Kaminsky's walkabout."

Fly Fishing for Dummies is a distillation of fly-fishing's ins and outs for novices to the sport. Despite the sport's mystique, Kaminsky explains in the book that it actually does not require "the touch of a surgeon, the body mechanics of Tiger Woods, and the spirit of a Zen master." Providing tips on gear, flies, casting, techniques, and fishing strategies, the book also gives the location of the best trout rivers in North America. In the similar title, Fishing for Dummies: An Illustrated Reference for the Rest of Us, Kaminsky helps readers become acquainted with a variety of fishing techniques, such as fly fishing, spinning, or bait casting, and methods to improve them. The book includes identification information for the most common freshwater and saltwater fish, plus instructions on how to tie knots, secure lures, and choose the right bait. Optimistically, it goes on to tell readers how to clean and cook the catch of the day. Fishing for Dummies also describes how disabled people can become involved in the sport and provides Internet resources for fishers.

The Fly Fisherman's Guide to the Meaning of Life: What a Lifetime on the Water Has Taught Me about Love, Work, Food, Sex, and Getting Up Early offers condensed philosophical musings acquired the hard way at the casting end of a fly-fishing rod. Kaminsky contemplates the difficult and time-consuming steps toward becoming an accomplished fly-fisherman, including the awkward first attempts and the almost Zen-like mastery that can be found at advanced levels of skill. The author also ponders about what an obsession with water and the creatures within it has meant to him throughout a lifetime spent fishing, thinking about fishing, and getting ready to fish.

.p 225

In addition to being an outdoorsman, Kaminsky presents himself as something of a gourmand, and some of his works deal with food and cooking. Celebrate!: Cookbook, a cookbook written with Sheila Lukins, covers recipes and dishes appropriate for almost fifty different types of celebrations and special events that one might encounter in life. Kaminsky and Lukins discuss holiday meals from New Year's Day to Christmas and Chanukah, life milestones such as birthdays and graduations, weddings and job successes, and offer appropriate menus, special dishes, and extra flair for special occasions.

Pig Perfect: Encounters with Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them chronicles Kaminsky's almost grail-like search for some of the best pork and ham available throughout the world. Willing to travel for that perfect piece of pig, Kaminsky looks for iberico ham in the Andalusian mountains, dives into a roast of cochinita pibil in a Yucatan village, and delights in the deep pleasures of a simple pork loin. He describes a "pig sacrifice" in a Spanish town, where he "witnesses with awe" the deliberate and "meticulous harvesting of an animal from which there is no waste," stated Booklist reviewer Mark Knoblauch. He also looks into some of the possible reasons behind many religious and societal taboos on the consumption of pork. A variety of recipes rounds out Kaminsky's successful search for the perfect pig. Library Journal reviewer Jennifer A. Wickes concluded: "For those who enjoy food literature and cooking, this work is an ideal escape."

Kaminsky has written on other topics as well, often with coauthors who are experts in their fields. Food enters the subject of these books in many cases, too. John Madden's Ultimate Tailgating, for example, was written with sportscaster John Madden. Not exactly a football book, it includes a compendium of over eighty recipes for tailgate parties. Divided into regional cuisines, the book features sidebars with tidbits of local history. Kaminsky's collaboration with four-star chef John Gray, The Elements of Taste, contains over 130 contemporary recipes with discussions of how and why their ingredients work well together. Kaminsky also collaborated with Olympic gold medal-winning figure skater Peggy Fleming on her autobiography, The Long Program: Skating toward Life's Victories.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 1999, Wes Lukowsky, review of The Long Program: Skating toward Life's Victories, p. 409; June 1, 2005, Mark Knoblauch, review of Pig Perfect: Encounters with Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them, p. 1736.

House Beautiful, August, 2005, Mario Lopez-Cordero, "Beach Reads," review of Pig Perfect, p. 103.

Library Journal, October 15, 1999, Bonnie Collier, review of The Long Program, p. 76; April 1, 2002, Nathan Ward, review of The Fly Fisherman's Guide to the Meaning of Life: What a Lifetime on the Water Has Taught Me about Love, Work, Food, Sex, and Getting Up Early, p. 117; May 1, 2005, Jennifer A. Wickes, review of Pig Perfect, p. 110.

People Weekly, November 1, 1999, Deborah Waldman, review of The Long Program, p. 409; September 10, 2001, Jack Friedman, review of The Moon Pulled Up an Acre of Bass, p. 51; November 10, 2003, Max Alexander, review of Celebrate!: Cookbook, p. 68.

Publishers Weekly, March 23, 1998, review of Stop and Sell the Roses, p. 86; September 27, 1999, review of The Long Program, p. 89; July 23, 2001, review of The Moon Pulled up an Acre of Bass, p. 61; October 13, 2003, review of Celebrate!, p. 72.