Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. David D. Downie (born 1958 in San Francisco) is a multilingual Paris-based American nonfiction author, crime novelist and journalist who writes most often about culture, food and travel. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Downie took a master s degree in Italian from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was a Kenyon Scholar and University Fellow. After working in the early 1980s as a translator, interpreter and press officer in Milan, he moved to Paris. His writing reflects an abiding interest in French and Italian culture, politics, food and language.