1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
3.
New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year
4.
Calendar
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A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, a date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a record of such a system. A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a calendar or a partly or fully chronological list of documents. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not necessarily, synchronized with the cycle of the sun or the moon. The most common type of calendar was the lunisolar calendar. Latin calendarium meant account book, register, the Latin term was adopted in Old French as calendier and from there in Middle English as calender by the 13th century. The course of the Sun and the Moon are the most evident forms of timekeeping, nevertheless, the Roman calendar contained very ancient remnants of a pre-Etruscan 10-month solar year. The first recorded calendars date to the Bronze Age, dependent on the development of writing in the Ancient Near East, a larger number of calendar systems of the Ancient Near East becomes accessible in the Iron Age, based on the Babylonian calendar. This includes the calendar of the Persian Empire, which in turn gave rise to the Zoroastrian calendar as well as the Hebrew calendar, calendars in antiquity were lunisolar, depending on the introduction of intercalary months to align the solar and the lunar years. This was mostly based on observation, but there may have been attempts to model the pattern of intercalation algorithmically. The Roman calendar was reformed by Julius Caesar in 45 BC, the Julian calendar was no longer dependent on the observation of the new moon but simply followed an algorithm of introducing a leap day every four years. This created a dissociation of the month from the lunation. The Islamic calendar is based on the prohibition of intercalation by Muhammad and this resulted in an observationally based lunar calendar that shifts relative to the seasons of the solar year. The first calendar reform of the modern era was the Gregorian calendar. Such ideas are mooted from time to time but have failed to gain traction because of the loss of continuity, massive upheaval in implementation, a full calendar system has a different calendar date for every day. Thus the week cycle is by not a full calendar system. The simplest calendar system just counts time periods from a reference date and this applies for the Julian day or Unix Time
5.
Magazine
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A magazine is a publication, usually a periodical publication, which is printed or electronically published. Magazines are generally published on a schedule and contain a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, by a price, by prepaid subscriptions. At its root, the magazine refers to a collection or storage location. In the case of written publication, it is a collection of written articles and this explains why magazine publications share the word root with gunpowder magazines, artillery magazines, firearms magazines, and, in French, retail stores such as department stores. By definition, a magazine paginates with each issue starting at three, with the standard sizing being 8 3/8 ×10 7/8 inches. However, in the sense a journal has continuous pagination throughout a volume. Some professional or trade publications are also peer-reviewed, an example being the Journal of Accountancy, academic or professional publications that are not peer-reviewed are generally professional magazines. That a publication calls itself a journal does not make it a journal in the technical sense, magazines can be distributed through the mail, through sales by newsstands, bookstores, or other vendors, or through free distribution at selected pick-up locations. The subscription business models for distribution fall into three main categories. In this model, the magazine is sold to readers for a price, either on a basis or by subscription. Paid circulation allows for defined readership statistics and this means that there is no cover price and issues are given away, for example in street dispensers, airline, or included with other products or publications. Because this model involves giving issues away to unspecific populations, the statistics only entail the number of issues distributed and this is the model used by many trade magazines distributed only to qualifying readers, often for free and determined by some form of survey. This allows a level of certainty that advertisements will be received by the advertisers target audience. This latter model was used before the rise of the World Wide Web and is still employed by some titles. For example, in the United Kingdom, a number of computer-industry magazines use this model, including Computer Weekly and Computing, for the global media industry, an example would be VideoAge International. The earliest example of magazines was Erbauliche Monaths Unterredungen, a literary and philosophy magazine, the Gentlemans Magazine, first published in 1731, in London was the first general-interest magazine. Edward Cave, who edited The Gentlemans Magazine under the pen name Sylvanus Urban, was the first to use the term magazine, founded by Herbert Ingram in 1842, The Illustrated London News was the first illustrated magazine
6.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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Chapel Hill is a city in Orange County, North Carolina, and the home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Health Care. The population was 57,233 at the 2010 census, Chapel Hill is the 15th-largest city in North Carolina. Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh make up the three corners of the Research Triangle, so named in 1959 with the creation of Research Triangle Park, a research park between Durham and Raleigh. Chapel Hill is one of the cities of the Durham-Chapel Hill MSA. Chapel Hill sits atop a hill which was occupied by a small Anglican chapel of ease, built in 1752. The Carolina Inn now occupies the site of the original chapel, in 1819, the town was founded to serve the University of North Carolina and grew up around it. The town was chartered in 1851, and its main street, in 1968, only a year after its schools became fully integrated, Chapel Hill became the first predominantly white municipality in the South to elect an African American mayor, Howard Lee. Lee served from 1969 until 1975 and, among other things, helped establish Chapel Hill Transit, several hybrid and articulated buses have been added recently. All buses carry GPS transmitters to report their location in time to a tracking web site. Buses can transport bicycles and have wheelchair lifts, in 1993, the town celebrated its bicentennial, which resulted in the establishment of the Chapel Hill Museum. On February 10,2015, three students were killed in their home, Finley Forest Condominiums, next to the Friday Center for Continuing Education. Their next-door neighbor, Craig Stephen Hicks, was arrested by police, Chapel Hill is located in the southeast corner of Orange County. It is bounded on the west by the town of Carrboro, however, most of Chapel Hills borders are adjacent to unincorporated portions of Orange and Durham Counties rather than shared with another municipality. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has an area of 21.3 square miles. Durham, North Carolina, is the core of the four-county Durham-Chapel Hill MSA, the US Office of Management and Budget also includes Chapel Hill as a part of the Raleigh-Durham-Cary Combined Statistical Area, which has a population of 1,749,525 as of Census 2010. According to the 2010 U. S. Census,57,233 people in 20,564 households resided in Chapel Hill, the population density was 2,687 people per square mile. The racial composition of the town was 72. 8% White,9. 7% African American,0. 3% Native American,11. 9% Asian,0. 02% Pacific Islander,2. 7% some other race, and 2. 7% of two or more races. About 6. 4% of the population was Hispanic or Latino of any race, about 30. 6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7. 7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older
7.
Love, Loss, and What I Wore
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Love, Loss, and What I Wore is a play written by Nora and Delia Ephron based on the 1995 book of the same name by Ilene Beckerman. It is organized as a series of monologues and uses a rotating cast of five principal women, the subject matter of the monologues includes womens relationships and wardrobes and at times the interaction of the two, using the female wardrobe as a time capsule of a womans life. The show was presented as a part of the 2008 summer series at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York. The production and its cast received positive critical attention, the production won the 2010 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience as well as the 2010 Broadway. com Audience Award for Favorite New Off-Broadway Play. The show has produced on six continents and more than eight countries. It began a tour in the United States in September 2011 in Chicago. It is making a performance in Paris in January 2012. Nora Ephron was a writer, director and producer best known for writing the screenplays of romantic comedy films and she received three Academy Award nominations for Original Screenplay, for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally. and Sleepless in Seattle. She had also written five best-selling books, and she wrote the 2002 play Imaginary Friends, Ephron sometimes co-authored screenplays with her sister, writer-producer Delia Ephron, including Youve Got Mail, Hanging Up and Bewitched. Nora Ephron wrote the introduction to Beckermans eponymous 1995 book, which she thought had dramatic possibilities. Soon after its publication, Ephron gave the book to eight of her friends for Christmas and she became interested in writing her own version of the book. Once she decided to adapt Love, Loss, and What I Wore into a play, she, the shows monologues are sourced largely from Beckermans book. The Ephrons wove together a collection of adapted from the book with recollections of friends. One of the monologues that became a highlight of the production was based on Nora Ephrons 2006 best-seller I Feel Bad About My Neck. A character called Gingy acts as the narrator, the show opens with her sketching various parts of her wardrobe that stir the most poignant memories. She weaves her life story among the tales, describing her three marriages, motherhood and the death of a child, each turning point marked by a particular item of clothing. Her life is represented beginning with experiences in a Brownies uniform, another character serves as the vixen, another plays a vulnerable gang member from Chicago, a third portrays a brave cancer patient, and the last serves as a mature woman pierced by vivid memories. One of these characters, named Heather, chooses conservative think shoes over high heels in her youth, the gang member likes insignias that are prominent on sweaters and their creator
8.
North Adams, Massachusetts
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North Adams is a city in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area and its population was 13,708 as of the 2010 census, making it the least populous city in the state. North Adams was first settled in 1745 during King Georges War, during the war, Canadian and Native American forces laid siege to Fort Massachusetts. 30 prisoners were taken to Quebec, half died in captivity, the town was incorporated separately from Adams in 1878. The city is named in honor of Samuel Adams, a leader in the American Revolution, signer of the Declaration of Independence, for much of its history, North Adams was a mill town. Manufacturing began in the city before the Revolutionary War, largely because the confluence of the Hoosic Rivers two branches provided water power for small-scale industry, North Adams was also the headquarters for building the Hoosac Tunnel. In 1860, Oliver Arnold and Company was established with the latest equipment for printing cloth, large government contracts to supply fabric for the Union Army helped the business prosper. During the next four decades, Arnold Print Works became one of the leading manufacturers of printed textiles. It also became the largest employer in North Adams, with some 3,200 workers by 1905, later that year, the Sprague Electric Company bought the former print works site. With state-of-the-art equipment, Sprague was a research and development center, conducting studies on electricity. After the war, its products were used in the systems for Gemini moon missions. Its closure devastated the local economy, unemployment rates rose and population declined. After Sprague closed, business and political leaders in North Adams sought ways to re-use the vast complex, when Mayor John Barrett III suggested the vast Marshall Street complex as a possible exhibition site, the idea of creating a contemporary arts center in North Adams began to take shape. The Massachusetts legislature announced its support for the project in 1988, subsequent economic upheaval threatened the project, but broad-based support from the community and the private sector, which pledged more than $8 million, ensured that it moved forward. The eventual proposal used the scale and versatility of the spaces to link the facilitys past and its new life as the countrys largest center for contemporary visual. Since it opened, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art has been part of an economic transformation in the region based on cultural, recreational. North Adams has become home for new restaurants, contemporary art galleries. In addition, once-shuttered area factories and mills have been rehabilitated as lofts for artists to live and work in
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Alain Ducasse
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Alain Ducasse is a Monégasque chef. He operates a number of restaurants including Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester which holds three stars in the Michelin Guide, Ducasse was born in Orthez, but educated on a farm in Castel-Sarrazin in southwestern France. In 1972, when he was sixteen, Ducasse began an apprenticeship at the Pavillon Landais restaurant in Soustons, after this apprenticeship, he began work at Michel Guérard’s restaurant in Eugénie-les-Bains while also working for Gaston Lenôtre during the summer months. He currently holds 21 Michelin stars, Ducasses first position as chef came in 1980 when he took over the kitchens at L’amandier in Mougins. One year later, he assumed the position of chef at La Terrasse in the Hôtel Juana in Juan-les-Pins. In 1984, he was awarded two stars in the Michelin Red Guide, in the same year Ducasse was the only survivor of a Piper Aztec aircraft crash that injured him severely. In 1986, Ducasse was offered the Chef position at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo, after assuring himself that the Hotels other restaurant operations were operating well, Ducasse continued to run management. On 12 August 1996, the Alain Ducasse restaurant opened in Le Parc – Sofitel Demeure Hôtels in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, the Red Guide awarded the restaurant three stars just eight months after opening. That restaurant closed in 2007 when Ducasse chose to open a restaurant in Las Vegas named Mix, which later went on to earn one star in the Michelin Red Guide. In early 2008, Ducasse opened Adour, at the St. Regis Hotel on 16th and K Street in Washington, DC, Ducasse became the first chef to own restaurants carrying three Michelin Stars in three cities. The New York restaurant was dropped from the 2007 Michelin Guide because the restaurant was scheduled to close, Ducasse has become known through his writing and influences. Ducasse is also one of two chefs to hold 21 Michelin stars throughout his career. He has been special guest in the US and Italian versions of MasterChef, in 2013 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement on The Worlds 50 Best Restaurants List. Ducasse was a French citizen by birth, however, on 17 June 2008, he became a naturalized citizen of Monaco. He chose Monegasque citizenship in order to take advantage of the tax rates. Alain Ducasses restaurants, cooking schools, cookbooks, and consulting activities had revenues of $15.9 million in 2002, since that time, Ducasse has been expanding his reach. Alain Ducasse has also opened a school for the general public in Paris and another for chefs. Ducasse has also authored books, with the most famous being Alain Ducasse Culinary Encyclopedia
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Book
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A book is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other materials, fastened together to hinge at one side, with text and/or images printed in ink. A single sheet within a book is a leaf, and each side of a leaf is a page, a set of text-filled or illustrated pages produced in electronic format for reading on a computer screen, smartphone or e-reader device is known as an electronic book, or e-book. The term books may refer the body of works of literature. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals, in novels and sometimes other types of books, a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books. An avid reader or collector of books or a lover is a bibliophile or colloquially. A shop where books are bought and sold is a bookshop or bookstore, Books are also sold in some department stores, drugstores and newspaper vendors. Books can also be borrowed from libraries, google has estimated that as of 2010, approximately 130,000,000 distinct titles had been published. In some wealthier nations, printed books are giving way to the usage of electronic or e-books, the word book comes from Old English bōc, which in turn comes from the Germanic root *bōk-, cognate to beech. Similarly, in Slavic languages буква is cognate with beech, in Russian and in Serbian and Macedonian, the word букварь or буквар refers specifically to a primary school textbook that helps young children master the techniques of reading and writing. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood, similarly, the Latin word codex, meaning a book in the modern sense, originally meant block of wood. When writing systems were created in ancient civilizations, a variety of objects, such as stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets, the study of such inscriptions forms a major part of history. The study of inscriptions is known as epigraphy, the Ancient Egyptians would often write on papyrus, a plant grown along the Nile River. At first the words were not separated from other and there was no punctuation. Texts were written right to left, left to right. The technical term for that last type of writing is boustrophedon, a tablet might be defined as a physically robust writing medium, suitable for casual transport and writing. See also stylus, the instrument used to write on a tablet, clay tablets were flattened and mostly dry pieces of clay that could be easily carried, and impressed with a stylus. They were used as a medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age. Tablets were used by traders to record sales of such as bushels of grain
11.
Portland, Oregon
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Portland is a port and the largest city in the U. S. state of Oregon and the seat of Multnomah County. It is in the Willamette Valley region of the Pacific Northwest, at the confluence of the Willamette, the city covers 145 square miles and had an estimated population of 632,309 in 2015, making it the 26th most populous city in the United States. Approximately 2,389,228 people live in the Portland metropolitan statistical area and its Combined Statistical Area ranks 17th with a population of 3,022,178. Roughly 60% of Oregons population resides within the Portland metropolitan area, named after Portland, Maine, the Oregon settlement began to be populated in the 1830s near the end of the Oregon Trail. Its water access provided convenient transportation of goods, and the industry was a major force in the citys early economy. At the turn of the 20th century, the city had a reputation as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. After the citys economy experienced a boom during World War II. Beginning in the 1960s, Portland became noted for its liberal political values, and the city has earned a reputation as a bastion of counterculture. According to a 2009 Pew Research Center study, Portland ranks as the eighth most popular American city, the city operates with a commission-based government guided by a mayor and four commissioners as well as Metro, the only directly elected metropolitan planning organization in the United States. The city government is notable for its planning and investment in public transportation. Its climate is marked by warm, dry summers and cool and this climate is ideal for growing roses, and Portland has been called the City of Roses for over a century. Keep Portland Weird is a slogan for the city. During the prehistoric period, the land that would become Portland was flooded after the collapse of glacial dams from Lake Missoula and these massive floods occurred during the last ice age and filled the Willamette Valley with 300 to 400 feet of water. The Chinook people occupying the land which would become Portland were first documented by Meriwether Lewis, before its European settlement, the Portland Basin of the lower Columbia River and Willamette River valleys had been one of the most densely populated regions on the Pacific Coast. Large numbers of settlers began arriving in the Willamette Valley in the 1830s via the Oregon Trail. In the early 1840s a new settlement began emerging ten miles from the mouth of the Willamette River and this community was initially referred to as Stumptown and The Clearing because of the many trees cut down to allow for its growth. In 1843 William Overton saw potential in the new settlement but lacked the funds to file a land claim. For 25 cents Overton agreed to half of the 640-acre site with Asa Lovejoy of Boston
12.
Thomas Keller
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Thomas Keller is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. The restaurant is a winner in the annual Restaurant Magazine list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World. He is the only American chef to have been awarded three star Michelin ratings for two different restaurants. He currently holds 7 Michelin stars total,3 at Per Se,3 at The French Laundry, Kellers mother was a restaurateur who employed Thomas as help when her cook got sick. Four years after his parents divorced, the family moved east and settled in Palm Beach, in his teenage summers, he worked at the Palm Beach Yacht Club starting as a dishwasher and quickly moving up to cook. It was here he discovered his passion for cooking and perfection in a hollandaise sauce, during summers he worked as a cook in Rhode Island. One summer he was discovered by French-born Master Chef Roland Henin and was tasked to cook meals at The Dunes Club. Under Henins study, Keller learned the fundamentals of classical French cooking, after The Dunes Club, Keller worked various cooking positions in Florida and soon became the cook at a small French restaurant called La Rive in the Hudson River valley in Catskill, New York. Thomas worked alone with the couples grandmother as prep cook, after three years at La Rive, unable to buy it from the owners, he left and moved to New York and then Paris, apprenticing at various Michelin-starred restaurants. After returning to America in 1984, he was hired as chef de cuisine at La Reserve in New York, rakels refined French cuisine catered to the expensive tastes of Wall Street executives and received a two-star review from The New York Times. Its popularity waned as the stock market bottomed out and at the end of the 1980s, Keller left, following the split with his partner at Rakel, Keller took various consultant and chef positions in New York and Los Angeles. In the spring of 1992 he came upon an old French steam laundry in Yountville and he spent nineteen months raising $1.2 million from acquaintances and investors to purchase the restaurant, then opened in 1994. Over the next few years the restaurant earned numerous awards, including the James Beard Foundation, gourmet magazines, the Mobil Guide, in April 2009, Keller became engaged to longtime girlfriend and former general manager at the French Laundry, Laura Cunningham. After the success of The French Laundry, Thomas and his brother, Joseph Keller, located down the street from The French Laundry, it serves moderately priced French bistro fare, with Bouchon Bakery opening next door a few years later. Keller has joked in the past that the motivation for Bouchons opening was to give him somewhere to eat after work at The French Laundry, on January 26,2004, Keller opened his restaurant Bouchon in Las Vegas. On February 16,2004, Kellers much anticipated Per Se restaurant opened in the Time Warner Center complex in New York under the helm of Kellers Chef de Cuisine, Jonathan Benno. The latest restaurant, ad hoc, opened in September 2006 in Yountville with a different fixed price comfort food dinner served family style every night, in 1992, with his girlfriend of the time, to distribute Provençal-style olive oil and red wine vinegar. Recently, Keller started marketing a line of signature white Limoges porcelain dinnerware by Raynaud called Hommage Point that he helped design and a collection of silver hollow ware by Christofle
