One of the most unusual philanthropic enterprises of the 20th century almost never happened: Newman's Own was the name intended for a restaurant the movie star wanted to open near his home in Westport, Conn. But the idea never went anywhere, freeing up Newman to start a business in the early 1980s with his friend Hotchner, a bestselling author (Papa Hemingway
), selling a salad dressing made from Newman's personal recipe. The rest is history. As this breezy memoir recalls, the two broke every rule for launching a new food business, ignoring the failure rate for celebrity-themed products, demanding all-natural ingredients and bypassing nearly every aspect of market research (although they did hold one taste test at the home of local caterer Martha Stewart). Despite all this, they managed to pull in nearly $1 million in profits their first year, all earmarked for charity, and have since launched many more products and donated nearly $140 million. This part of the story doesn't really have a lot of meat to it, but it is an entertaining string of anecdotes, song parodies and wacky customer letters. The book's second half becomes more somber as it shifts focus to the Hole in the Wall Gang, the organization they created to build and run camps for children with serious illnesses. The origins of each of the eight camps are recounted in detail, along with letters from some of the campers. A slew of appendixes, including several recipes utilizing Newman's Own products, rounds out the text. (Nov.)
Forecast:
This title is bound to attract a lot of curiosity—loyal fans of the salad dressing alone (not to mention of Newman) could make the book a bestseller
.
