Julia Child - To be a good cook,...

"To be a good cook you have to have a love of the good, a love of hard work, and a love of creating. Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. And cooking draws upon your every talent—science, mathematics, energy, history, experience—and the more experience you have the less likely are your experiments to end in drivel and disaster. The more you know, the more you can create. There’s no end to imagination in the kitchen." Julia Child -- Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert. For a limited time, enjoy the a free chapter of Particular Passions on Facebook. The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Julia Child - HERSTORY.

"I was thirty-two when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate. I think it kind of crawled up on me. My mother didn’t cook because I grew up in an era when most all middle-income people had maids. So she never learned, and I never really learned at all. But my grandmother was a great cook. She grew up in the farming country of Illinois—she made doughnuts and cakes and wonderful chicken, as I remember. We always had good food at her house, and at our house, too—plain good American food. But we never discussed it; it was expected to be good." Julia Child -- Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert.

For a limited time, enjoy a complimentary copy of the oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

For a limited time, enjoy the a free chapter of Particular Passions on Facebook.

Julia Child - whose love of French Culture brought the culinary arts to America.

"I was planning to go into this cooking thing very seriously and take a long time studying and learning, but then I was suddenly thrown into it for keeps. After I had met Simca, I also met her friend and colleague, Louisette Bertholle, also a member of the gastronomy club, Le Cercle des Gourmettes. She and Simca were working on a cookbook for the United States, which had been going on for some time. One day the three of us had invited some American friends of mine for lunch. They wanted cooking lessons but said they didn’t want to go to the Cordon Bleu because they didn’t speak French, and so why didn’t we teach them? I thought, My heavens, I wasn’t nearly ready for that. But Simca, who is always ready for anything and was far more experienced than either Louisette or I, said, “Well, why not?” And we started our cooking school, L’Ecole des Trois Gourmandes, just about the next day."

– Julia Child, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert.

For a limited time, enjoy the a free chapter of Particular Passions on Facebook. The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Billie Jean King - On Perfection

"Perfection is something you never reach, although you keep trying. Always. It’s being in perfect balance. If you’re planning a topspin backhand, that’s exactly what you produce. That doesn’t happen very often. Even if you hit it almost perfectly, you think, Maybe I could have hit it just a little closer to the line, a little bit harder or softer. You just keep extending yourself. It’s fun to see if you can do it."

– Billie Jean King, from 'Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times' by Lynn Gilbert.

Enjoy the oral biography of Billie Jean King from her time on the courts -- through Facebook for a limited time.

Billie Jean King – The oral biography from her days on the court.

"I do something because I want to do it, not because I feel a sense of responsibility. Sacrifice is doing something you don’t want to do. Yes, I get tired, cross, lose my temper, get ticked off, and sometimes I don’t feel appreciated, but as I told the women players when we started with Gladys and Joe, “If you think that we’re going to be appreciated ten years from now, I got news for you. You should get joy and gratification out of it now. You know that you’ve done it. If that isn’t enough for you, don’t bother."

– Billie Jean King, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', the oral biography of Billie Jean King, who created opportunities for women on the tennis court and in the workplace, and who continues today to champion social change and equality around the world.

For a limited time, enjoy a this complimentary chapter of Particular Passions -- the oral biography of Billie Jean King from her days on the court. Available at Facebook.

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Billie Jean King – HERSTORY.

"I don’t think about the past too much, only if it’s going to help me today. The danger of thinking about the past all the time is that you live in the past. A lot of athletes do that. They remember when they were number one. That’s all they talk about to their friends. How boring. You don’t want to hear about somebody who was champion in 1958. They don’t live in 1958, they live in 1981. I get burned out a lot, sure. I take a rest and then get charged up again. I want to shape the todays and tomorrows."

– Billie Jean King, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert.

The oral biography of Billie Jean King, who created opportunities for women on the tennis court and in the workplace, and who continues today to champion social change and equality around the world.

Available at Amazon and Apple.

Justine Wise Polier

"I DON’T THINK OF MYSELF as a crusader, just a hard-working old dray horse. I would think crusaders are much more sure of their positions. Unfortunately, if you’ve learned to look at both sides of things, life gets more complicated."

– Justine Wise Polier, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times'. PARTICULAR PASSIONS recounts the rich oral histories of pioneering women of the twentieth century from the arts and sciences, athletics and law, mathematics and politics.

We share their journeys as they pursue successful paths with intelligence and determination, changing the world for the millions of women and men who were inspired by them.

These stories will captivate, educate, and inspire you.

Particular Passions on Apple and Amazon.

Billie Jean King – The oral biography from her days on the court.

"People don’t change overnight. It doesn’t matter what the law says. You can have a civil rights act, you can make abortion legal, but you still have to deal with what people feel and think. And that’s what it’s all about. You slowly have to persuade people and hope they are reasonable enough to see things in a logical, objective way."

– Billie Jean King, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times'.

The oral biography of Billie Jean King, who created opportunities for women on the tennis court and in the workplace, and who continues today to champion social change and equality around the world.

For a limited time, enjoy a this complimentary chapter of Particular Passions, the oral biography of Billie Jean King from her days on the court. Available at Facebook.

Available at Amazon and Apple.

Bella Abzug – On the rights of women.

"What I try to do is make women feel that there isn’t anything they can’t do if they want to. And when I speak to them or meet with them, I try to give them that feeling, that this is their right. Whatever they want to do, they have a right to be and a right to expect support from institutions which affect their lives. I also try to awaken young people. This is their future. They’re going to be in charge in the year 2000. I tell them that they are the major force for change in this country and that they can change their own lives and the lives of others by acting on that together with other people. When I’ve finished, I like to think they believe it."

– Bella Abzug, from 'Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert. For a limited time -- the oral biography of Bella Abzug, an outspoken crusader for peace and human rights who heralded in an era of social change, is available free of charge.

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Eleanor Holmes Norton – HERSTORY

"Did I have doubts? If I simply said I had no doubts I could do it, I wouldn’t be conveying at all the complexity of why I knew I could proceed to do this. I’ve left out one piece of the mosaic—my grandmother. She lived in the house right in back of us. My grandmother thought I was the smartest child that was ever created. She never said to me, “You are the smartest child in the world,” but I knew she thought it because the way she related to me made it clear that she expected great things of me. So in point of fact I believed I should get 100 on every spelling test and that I should be able to answer every question. The reason that’s important is clearly that, in addition to my own parents, there was this matriarchal figure who considered me the center of the universe and that helped to build self-confidence and the sense of ego that drives a person forward. If you said to me, Did I ever have any doubt that I could get the EEOC running effectively? all I could say was that my grandmother expected me to. It’s the last piece of the mosaic."  – Eleanor Holmes Norton, from 'Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times', By Lynn Gilbert.

PARTICULAR PASSIONS recounts the rich oral histories of pioneering women of the twentieth century from the arts and sciences, athletics and law, mathematics and politics.  We share their journeys as they pursue successful paths with intelligence and determination, changing the world for the millions of women and men who were inspired by them.  These stories will captivate, educate, and inspire you.

Particular Passions is available on Apple and Amazon.