David Dow

Brazos Book of the Month August 2010

Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

The long-awaited follow-up to the megabestseller Kitchen Confidential.

In the ten years since his classic Kitchen Confidential first alerted us to the idiosyncrasies and lurking perils of eating out, from Monday fish to the breadbasket conspiracy, much has changed for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business—and for Anthony Bourdain.

Medium Raw explores these changes, moving back and forth from the author's bad old days to the present. Tracking his own strange and unexpected voyage from journeyman cook to globe-traveling professional eater and drinker, and even to fatherhood, Bourdain takes no prisoners as he dissects what he's seen, pausing along the way for a series of confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food.

Click here for more information on the book.

David Dow

Start: February 15, 2010 - 7:00pm

End: February 15, 2010 - 8:30pm

Brazos welcomes back David Dow, author of Executed on a Technicality, for a reading from his new book, published February 3, The Autobiography of an Execution.

"For a lot of good reasons, and some that are not so good, executions in the U.S. are carried out in private. The voters, the vast majority of whom support executions, are not allowed to see them. The Autobiography of an Execution is a riveting and compelling account of a Texas execution written and narrated by a lawyer in the thick of the last minute chaos. It should be read by all those who support state sponsored killing." -- John Grisham, author of The Innocent Man

"Defending the innocent is easy. David Dow fights for the questionable. He is tormented, but relentless, and takes us inside his struggle with candor and insight, shudders and all." -- Dave Cullen, author of Columbine

"David Dow's extraordinary memoir lifts the veil on the real world of representing defendants on death row. It will stay with me a long time." -- Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine

David R. Dow is professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center and an internationally recognized figure in the fight against the death penalty. He is the founder and director of the Texas Innocence. He lives in Houston, Texas.