Workhorse: My Sublime and Absurd Years in New York City’s Restaurant Scene

Reed debuts with an exhilarating if perplexing account of her years working for Joe Bastianich and Mario Batali’s famed restaurant empire. She started as a hostess at their New York City hot spot, Babbo, in 2005 while earning a master’s in social work, and later served as Bastianich’s beleaguered assistant, staying with the B&B Hospitality Group for more than a decade. Reed describes a Devil Wears Prada–esque world where she owed thousands in student loans but reveled in gifts of $600 face cream and jewelry. Grim work responsibilities were mitigated by crushes on various people, and Bastianich is painted as a cheapskate with the attention span of a hummingbird, but there’s surprisingly little talk of food and wine. The book’s saucy tone shifts when Reed addresses the sexual harassment allegations that forced Batali to leave the company in 2017. Her horror as men leapt to B&B’s defense lends resonance to her experience in a way that her earlier attempts to analyze a job that allowed her to sit “squarely in the fray of someone else’s life” never quite do. While it offers a juicy behind-the-scenes look at the high life, it’s difficult not to see this as a dark morality tale. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Nov.)