Bourdain’s Assistant Laurie Woolever On His Life, Legacy, And Love For Vietnam

Spending over a decade working with the legendary late Anthony Bourdain, writer Laurie Woolever has helped carry the chef and television host’s mantle after his passing in 2018. Earlier this year, she released the best-selling World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, chronicling some of the world’s most fascinating places that Bourdain traveled to. And in September, she released Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, a comprehensive, 59-chapter book that interviewed 91 of his close friends, family, and confidantes including the likes of Eric Ripert and Nigella Lawson.

Having known Bourdain so well, Woolever is able to help demystify the godlike status he held, pointing instead to his human qualities. Her writing tells not only of the joys and pleasures for which Bourdain was known, but also of the struggles and challenges that he faced — up through his final year. Yet, though Bourdain’s life was more complicated than any of his television shows could ever reveal, it’s his warmth and his ability to connect with anyone, anywhere in the world, that lives on as his legacy.

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