Former foreign affairs correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Pamela Druckerman loves to compare Americans to people of other nations. In her first book, Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee (2008), she noted that Americans are the least adept at having affairs, have the most difficulty enjoying them, and suffer the most in their aftermath. Based on numerous interviews with adulterers in ten countries, she provides plenty of juicy anecdotes, e.g, Russian spouses don’t count beach resort flings as infidelity; South Africans consider drunkenness an adequate excuse for extramarital sex, and Japanese businessmen believe, “If you pay, it’s not cheating.”
As a mother of three living in Paris, Druckerman discovered that French parents aren’t in unceasing servitude to their children AND they don’t feel guilty about this–as many of her friends in the States would. That is, if the officious Americans could ever say non to their kids. Her book about the laissez-faire phenomenon, the best-selling Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, is the perfect warm-up to her next one, French Children Don’t Throw Food (Penguin, 2013). Two of her biggest fans are Mireille Guiliano (author of French Women Don’t Get Fat) and Amy Chua (author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother). And us, too–who wants to be hit by food?