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I know, I know! You’re thinking back in horror to those unspeakable jello salads of your youth. The artificially-flavored and […]
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My favorite late-summer sandwich is Warm Goat Cheese, Tomato, and Basil Baguette. This luncheon dish is practicable only in late […]
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It’s the middle of July, and that mean’s sour-cherry season. Cherry pie is one of the great American desserts and […]
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It’s summer! We need cool, refreshing desserts that require little to no cooking and not too much effort. Passion Fruit […]
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It’s spring! The markets are flush with fresh tender asparagus. The season and the vegetable inspired me to create a […]
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A delicious and easy-to-make dish that’s much neglected these days is Finnan Haddie. I suspect it’s partly because this fish […]
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Chocolate, applesauce, and a myriad of spices. What’s not to like? Years ago in Manhattan, I used to shop at […]
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Lobster in Champagne Sauce with Green Grapes is an elegant and refined dish for an intimate dinner. I first encountered […]
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Coconut Cream Pie with a mountainous meringue topping was a staple in the 1950s Midwest. Though you don’t see it […]
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When you hear the dish Buckwheat Fettuccine with Pheasant Sauce, it immediately conjures up images of an elegant, top-rated restaurant. […]
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Are you looking for a different kind of cookie to give as holiday gifts? Then this retro recipe (hugely popular […]
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Elegant and easy to make, this duck-breast with pomegranate sauce recipe, with its ruby jewels of fruit kernels, is perfect […]
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Don’t we all crave foods from our childhood, and especially if we’ve moved to an area where they can no […]
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I love butterscotch pudding, but all the recipes I’ve encountered seem insipid, lacking in both flavor and character. I began […]
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This unusual watercress and sour cream omelet is one of my favorites, primarily because it offers a very moist and […]
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Why on earth is this cake called a pie? According to What’s Cooking in America, which details the history of […]
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Buttermilk Peanut Rolls were one of the special treats of my childhood. Rockford, Illinois, had a a plethora of great […]
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A man sits on a round divan in the Water Lilies room of the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris. […]
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Many times out of the holiday season I crave eggnog, so I decided to combine this craving with a dessert—hence […]
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As a child, my favorite pie was chocolate cream. My mother always used a mix that she got from a […]
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Sfincione is a Sicilian specialty and a common street food found particularly in the Porta Sant’Agata area of Palermo and […]
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I confess. The idea for this recipe comes from a supermarket cake—Entenmann’s Sour Cream Chip and Nut Loaf—which apparently no […]
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When the price of crab became prohibitive for making large quantities of crab cakes, I devised these codfish cakes as […]
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Although my favorite chocolate cake is the Pennsylvania Dutch Chocolate Cake (see recipe), there are times when I just want […]
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With the holidays approaching, it’s time to begin considering what cookies you will bake. I highly recommend two Sicilian specialties […]
Go to Books Tab for Information on My Autobiography
Critical Acclaim for The Wrong Side of the Room
“The book’s second half is fully stocked with accounts of stage shows galore—not to mention impressive name-dropping (Barbra Streisand, Betty Grable, Dorothy Lamour, Gene Kelly). These anecdotes from the theater’s social scene glide alongside vivid imagery from the author’s performances and other successes. The book also has a delightful, chatty sense of humor with moments of wry wit that make it exciting to read.
In the end, it effectively celebrates a life of artistic inspiration alongside the giddiness and glory of live theater.”
—Kirkus Review
Read the entire Kirkus Review here.
Readers’ Favorite Review
by Asher Syed
The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater by Norman Mathews is an autobiography chronicling the author’s life as he transitions from a confusing and often abusive childhood, born in a sleet of uncertainty (literally, as it turns out). Masked by imagination and written with a humor that most would not be able to apply to such situations, Mathews is able to harness this creativity and hitch it to his own ambitions as a rising star. When an injury threatens to derail an ascent that defies all odds, Mathews is forced to reinvent and reignite himself once more, and does so amid a whole host of personal and professional turmoil, scandal, and the kind of stories that are all the more shocking – and inspiring – because they are actually true.
Norman Mathews delivers a riveting memoir with The Wrong Side of the Room that opens with a contentious genesis and powerfully surges through to its finale. This is the ultimate tale of a man who is knocked down seven times and gets up eight, except in this case our tenacious narrator is struck to the ground far more than that. But he does continue to rise and appears to have carved out a genuine niche for himself until, “I woke up one morning with a strange pain in my back and running down my right leg. In a few days, it got much worse, and I began limping.” With the support of his partner Todd, he buys a Steinway, dives into formal education, and…well, at first that all implodes too. But Mathews is the consummate phoenix and, much like he displays in the writing of this book, skillfully maneuvers the trajectory of his life’s own narrative into a story that we are fortunate enough to have shared in The Wrong Side of the Room.
Impressively candid, exceptionally informative, deftly written, organized and presented, “The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater” is an extraordinary memoir that will have special and particular appeal for anyone with an interest in show business. . .very highly recommended for both community and academic library Contemporary American Biography collections.
—Midwest Book Review