Down and Out in Paradise

Slate wrote "A solidly researched and, despite its press, not especially lurid biography, Down and Out in Paradise has a stubborn resistance to psychologizing its subject that—along with the use of such antique terms as "the boob tube" and "red-blooded American male"—gives it a dated air. It reads as if it were written in 1999, the year that Bourdain's life changed as a result of the publication of Don't Eat Before Reading This, the sensational New Yorker article that became the basis for his bestselling book, 2000's Kitchen Confidential."[6]

The New York Times said in its review "Down and Out in Paradise is not the most subtle thing you'll ever read. Leerhsen is a former executive editor at Sports Illustrated whose previous books include biographies of Ty Cobb and Butch Cassidy. His Bourdain book goes down like a mass-market rock bio. I'd have loved it if I were 17. The author goes all in on Bourdain's angst, his instinctive distrust of authority, his hero-worship of talented outsiders like Hunter S. Thompson and Iggy Pop and William S. Burroughs."[7]

The Los Angeles Times wrote "Down and Out is a suicide whodunit framed as a biography; some of the many friends and family who declined to speak with Leerhsen have claimed that much in the book is inaccurate. Still, it reads as a sincere, if single-minded, attempt to look at the actual events of Bourdain's life."[8]

The Guardian wrote "For all its perceptiveness, Down and Out in Paradise is marred by its tendency to constantly tie Bourdain's life to the circumstances of his death: the book returns frequently to the subject, constantly foreshadows it, and closes, somewhat abruptly, with his funeral. That short-changes Bourdain."[9]