JOAN NATHAN is the author of numerous cookbooks, including Jewish Cooking in America and The New American Cooking, both of which won the James Beard Award and the IACP Award for best cookbook of the year. She was the host of the nation­ally syndicated PBS television series Jewish Cooking in America with Joan Nathan, based on the book. A frequent contributor to The New York Times, Tablet magazine, and other publications, Nathan is the recipient of numerous awards, including James Beard's Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America, Les Dames d'Escoffier's Grande Dame Award, and Food Arts magazine's Silver Spoon Award, and she received an honorary doctorate from the Spertus Institute of Jewish Culture in Chicago. She was Guest Curator of Food Culture USA for the 2005 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and a founding member of Les Dames d'Escoffier, and appointed to the Kitchen Cabinet of the National Museum of American History. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Nathan graduated from the University of Michigan with a master's degree in French literature and earned a master's in public administration from Harvard University. For three years she lived in Israel, where she worked for Mayor Teddy Kollek of Jerusalem. In 1974, working for Mayor Abraham Beame in New York, she cofounded the Ninth Avenue Food Festival. The mother of three grown children, Nathan lives in Washington, D.C., and on Martha's Vineyard with her hus­band, Allan Gerson.