Eating with the Enemy : How I Waged Peace with North Korea from My BBQ Shack in Hackensack

by Egan, Robert; Pitzer, Kurt

• ISBN13: 9780312571306
• ISBN10: 0312571305
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-27
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Summary

This unlikely tale follows a BBQ-restaurant owner from working-class New Jersey, who is on a mission to improve relations between the United States and North Korea. color photo insert.

Author Biography

ROBERT EGAN is the owner of Cubby’s, a barbecue restaurant in Hackensack, New Jersey. KURT PITZER has reported from some of the world’s most turbulent regions for the Boston Globe, The Sunday Times of London, the Los Angeles Times and People magazines. He co-wrote The Bomb in My Garden.

Table of Contents

There was only one chair in the room. Fluorescent tubes on the ceiling hummed with blue light. The woman smiled and explained in a soothing voice that there were some “procedures” they had to go through.

“We’re just going to put you under for a few minutes,” she said. One of the officials told me to turn around..

“Do I have a choice?” I lowered my pants, exposing most of my left butt cheek.  The woman came up from behind me, and I felt a sharp prick as she pushed in the needle and rammed the solution into my muscle. When she finished, I sat down.

“Which agency do you work for? CIA?” asked the other male official.

“I operate independently,” I said. I started to feel good. Very good. I had the urge to laugh, even though nobody had said anything funny. “I’m a lone wolf. And I make burgers for a living. I’m a burger-making lone wolf.”

I must have blacked out for some of it. When I opened my eyes again, the two men were there, but the woman was gone. I wiped my nose, and my hand came away bloody. I suddenly felt so sick and dizzy I thought I’d had a stroke. “What the fuck?”

Excerpts

There was only one chair in the room. Fluorescent tubes on the ceiling hummed with blue light. The woman smiled and explained in a soothing voice that there were some “procedures” they had to go through.

“We’re just going to put you under for a few minutes,” she said. One of the officials told me to turn around..

“Do I have a choice?” I lowered my pants, exposing most of my left butt cheek.  The woman came up from behind me, and I felt a sharp prick as she pushed in the needle and rammed the solution into my muscle. When she finished, I sat down.

“Which agency do you work for? CIA?” asked the other male official.

“I operate independently,” I said. I started to feel good. Very good. I had the urge to laugh, even though nobody had said anything funny. “I’m a lone wolf. And I make burgers for a living. I’m a burger-making lone wolf.”

I must have blacked out for some of it. When I opened my eyes again, the two men were there, but the woman was gone. I wiped my nose, and my hand came away bloody. I suddenly felt so sick and dizzy I thought I’d had a stroke. “What the fuck?”