she is the author of five cookbooks, including the award winning Desserts by Pierre Herme & Baking with Julia. She is a columnist for Bon Appetit & her articles & recipes have appeared in The New York Time, Food & Wine & other national publications.Julia Child was born in Pasadena, California on August 15, 1912. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Smith College in 1934 and served with the Office of Strategic Services in East Asia during World War II. After the war, Child lived in Paris for six years, attending the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school. After graduating from cooking school, Child opened her own culinary institute called, L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes with her… friends Simone Bech and Louisette Bertholle. She achieved critical acclaim with her first cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking which was first published in 1961 and is still in print today and helped to popularized French cuisine in America. Starting in 1963, Child hosted the first of many award winning cooking series on PBS, where she was best known for her exuberant personality and flamboyant cooking style. Her other books include The French Chef Cookbook; From Julia Child's Kitchen; and The Way to Cook. She also filmed an instructional video series on cooking and wrote columns for various magazines and newspapers. She died of kidney failure on August 13, 2004 at the age of 91.