• Title: Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man
• Author: Mark Kurlansky
• Genre/Subject: Biography
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Publication Date: 2012
• Start date: 7/23/24
• Finish date: 7/26/24

Review:

Clarence Birdseye was a real person, who knew? Not me for sure. I had heard of Birdseye Frozen Peas from crosswords but that was it. So I read this book and I learned all about Mr. Clarence “Bob” Birdseye and his curious life.

I use the word curious in every sense of the word. Curious as in odd or peculiar, and curious as in exhibiting curiosity towards the world and how things work in it. Clarence Birdseye was born in Brooklyn in 1886 and lived a man’s life. From riding and shooting bears in Montana to dogsledding and shooting polar bears in Labrador the man had the spirit of adventures and had a life full of adventures. So what? Lots of 19th century men and women were like that, Theodore Roosevelt for example or Robert Service. But Birdseye (yes that was his real name) was an explorer with an inventor’s instinct. Even sitting in a shack with the Labrador winter howling outside he was thinking about how to do things better, to make things easier for the rest of us. and he was. like me, obsessed with food.

Obsessed? Yes. Eating, cooking, growing, and most importantly preserving food were always on his mind. Birdseye wanted the world to have easy and convenient access to safe, nutritious and tasty food. So he invented a process to do that and lived happily ever… No, not at all. Lots and lots of research… No, not that either. Birdseye was a grip it and rip it man and that above all else was key to his success. He would get an idea, beg and cajole to get backers and then get after it, and often go broke in the process. But he didn’t stop, dusted himself off and got after it again but with improvements or alterations until he got it right. Then he would sell the rights and move on to the next thing on his insaatiably curious mind.

The author did a fine job of researching, and that is saying something as Birdseye left very little for a biographer to work with. Birdseye left only one book, a thin volume on gardening. Nothing on freezing food, nothing on his many patents, no autobiography. He did leave many diaries and journals however, so a good biographer like the author could put his life together like a puzzle.

This was a good read, could have used more of this, maybe less of that, but overall it was a well researched and well written biography which I enjoyed.