Fugu. Dog. Cobra. Bees. Spleen. A 600,000 SCU chili pepper. All considered foods by millions of people around the world. And all objects of great fascination to Tom Parker Bowles, a food journalist who grew up eating his mother's considerably safer roast chicken, shepherd's pie and mushy peas. Intrigued by the food phobias of two friends, Parker Bowles became inspired to examine the cultural divides that make some foods verboten or "dangerous" in the culture he grew up with while being seen as lip-smacking delicacies in others. So began a year-long odyssey through Asia, Europe and America in search of the world's most thrilling, terrifying and odd foods. Parker Bowles is always witty and sometimes downright hilarious in recounting his quest for envelope-pushing meals, ranging from the potentially lethal to the outright disgusting to the merely gluttonous--and he proves in this book that an open mouth and an open mind are the only passports a man needs to truly discover the world . "Tom Parker Bowles is nothing if not a charmer. From the first page of his mad, odd and sometimes thoroughly disgusting "The Year of Eating Dangerously," this reader was hooked."-- The Washington Times “ The Year of Eating Dangerously chronicles [Tom’s] travels to destinations near (Gloustershire) and far (Nashville, Seoul, Beijing) in an attempt to acquire new experiences and eat like the natives do, and ultimately what makes it so engaging is that he only partly succeeds…As a writer, though, he never wavers.. his sense of humor is intact throughout and never sharper than when he’s writing about himself…”-- The New York Times "A veritable culinary Odysseus, food critic Bowles set out from and returned to his native London to regale foodies and common omnivores alike with tales of exotic specimens from all ranges of the food spectrum. Over the course of "twelve months, four continents, 20,000 air miles and two inches on [his] waist," he managed to shove a lot into his thrill-seeking maw...while Bowles may fancy himself a professional eater with a penchant for risky man-food, he wins over his audience as a writer, describing dishes and sensations with the zeal of the recently famished, and his own hedonistic acts in delightful passages of unabashed bravado and self-deprecating humor"-- Kirkus Reviews TOM PARKER BOWLES, son of Prince Charles’ wife Camilla, is a respected British food critic, with columns in The Mail on Sunday , “Night and Day” and Tatler . He is also the author of E is for Eating: An Alphabet of Greed . He lives in London. I realize that beery bravado was the main culprit but I do remember (very vaguely) thinking what the point was in going on a search for the hottest sauces in the world if I didn't try at least a spatter. I imagine myself stepping up to the challenge, a brave knight fighting for the pride of his homeland. 'Bollocks to that,' says my ever-sensitive friend. 'You were a sweaty mess, and the whole crowd was waiting to see you go down in a blaze of unglory.' Apparently, the braying masses whooped for joy when I took on the challenge. And the crowd grew bigger still, as at least a dozen hot-sauce maestros gathered expectantly to have a laugh at the English fool. The bottle appeared once more, named Salsa Para Pendejos. Now it's one thing drunkenly agreeing to try a drop of this liquid fire but quite another to risk putting myself in hospital before I've finished at The Fiery Foods Show. I took the straw, touched it to my palm so there was a dot no bigger than a comma. A few in the crowd voiced their disappointment. Ignoring the heckles, I touched the tip of my tongue to the dot of sauce on my hand, probably taking no more than a quarter of the punctuation mark blob. The crowd grew silent, craning their necks to get a better view. --from A Year of Eating Dangerously