My American Dream: A Life of Love, Family, and Food Lidia Matticchio Bastianich(2018)

From the best-selling cookbook author, beloved and award-winning television personality, and hugely successful restaurateur--a heartwarming, emotional, revelatory memoir told with all her hallmark warmth and gusto.Lidia's story begins with her upbringing in Pula, a formerly Italian city turned Yugoslavian under Tito's communist regime. She enjoys a childhood surrounded by love and security--despite the family's poverty--learning everything about Italian cooking from her beloved grandmother, Nonna Rosa. When the communist regime begins investigating the family, they flee to Trieste, Italy, where they spend two years in a refugee camp waiting for visas to enter the United States--an experience that will shape Lidia for the rest of her life. At age 12, Lidia starts a new life in New York. She soon begins working in restaurants as a young teenager, the first step toward the creation of her own American dream. And she tells in great, vivid detail the fulfillment of that dream: her close-kni