What's it like to edit the most storied food magazine in the world?

Bestselling author Ruth Reichel joins us to talk about her latest book, Save Me the Plums.

How did prosecutors become so powerful and what are the consequences?

My colleague Emily Baselon will be here to talk about charged, the new movement to transform American prosecution and end mass incarceration.

To celebrate and honor National Poetry Month, we'll have a special reading by Special Poet.

Alexander Altair will give us an update from the literary world.

Plus, our critics will talk about the latest in literary criticism.

This is the Book Review Podcast from the New York Times. I'm Pamela Paul.

Ruth Reichel joins us now from San Francisco where she is touring for her new book, Save Me the Plums.

My Gourmet memoir, Ruth, thanks so much for being here.

It's a pleasure.

So this is not your first memoir, but your fifth memoir.

What did you want to do in this book? What inspired it?

I knew from the moment that I got the job at Gourmet that I was going to want to write this book.

I was working at the New York Times.

And as you know, journalists don't make a lot of money.

And I was entering a world that was magical to me.

A world of having hair and makeup people show up at your house in the morning.

The content as I entered, the closest thing I can compare it to is the quarter of FI,

under Louis XIV.

Complete with courteers and people who hate, I mean, it was all paratic and wonderful and strange.

And I knew I wanted to write about that world.

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