The new A24 book takes readers back to the summer that helped shape Anthony Bourdain, with never-before-seen photos, recipes and a companion film exploring the same formative chapter.
Before Anthony Bourdain became one of the most recognizable voices in food and travel, he was 19 years old, washing dishes and spending his summers in Provincetown.
A24’s new book, Happier, Stupider Times: Anthony Bourdain’s Provincetown Years, goes back to that period, documenting the restaurants, people and places that helped shape the Bourdain we would eventually come to know.
The 216-page hardcover is less traditional biography and more beautifully assembled time capsule. Inside are never-before-seen photographs of Bourdain, vintage restaurant menus, maps, artwork and pieces of Provincetown history, alongside original local recipes including Portuguese kale soup and Cape Cod clam bakes.
It’s also the kind of book you actually want to leave out.
With its foil-stamped hardcover and sun-washed, vintage aesthetic, Happier, Stupider Times doubles as a very chic coffee-table book. For anyone obsessed with Bourdain, food culture, travel or beautifully designed books, it also makes an especially good gift — particularly if Kitchen Confidential is already sitting on their shelf.
The appeal goes beyond nostalgia. Provincetown was where Bourdain first became immersed in restaurant culture, surrounded by cooks, fishermen, artists and the slightly chaotic personalities that would later populate his writing. The book gives those stories texture, showing the world around them rather than simply retelling them.
Its timing also lines up with A24’s new film TONY, which explores the same formative chapter of Bourdain’s life.
Directed by BlackBerry filmmaker Matt Johnson, TONY stars The Holdovers breakout Dominic Sessa as the young Bourdain, alongside Emilia Jones, Leo Woodall, Antonio Banderas and Stavros Halkias. Rather than trying to cover his entire life, the movie focuses on Bourdain before the fame — arriving in Provincetown and getting pulled into the strange, exhausting and addictive world of restaurant kitchens.
Johnson also contributes the foreword to Happier, Stupider Times, connecting his experience making the film with the real places and stories behind Bourdain’s Provincetown years.
Together, the two projects offer a look at Bourdain before he was an icon. TONY brings that summer to the screen, while Happier, Stupider Times gives fans something more tangible: the photographs, recipes, menus and memories that were actually there.
And yes, it looks just as good on a coffee table as we hoped.
Happier, Stupider Times: Anthony Bourdain’s Provincetown Years is available to order from A24 and ships by September 10. TONY is now playing in theatres.
Want more? Check out what’s new only at SKELETON Magazine.
