Happier, Stupider Times: Anthony Bourdain’s Provincetown Years

Provincetown is a vivid time capsule of cooking and nightlife in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the early to mid-1970s. It places you right inside the town that helped shape Anthony Bourdain into the chef, traveller, and writer he would become.

He may have first arrived chasing a girl, but he stayed for P-town’s open-minded, anything-goes energy. This small town left a lasting mark on his ambitions and set the course for the life that followed.

Built from ephemera, photos, excerpts, newspaper clippings, and recipes, the book captures the rowdy port and fishing crowd, local culinary legends, artists, gay culture, hard-partying hippies, and more.