James Kaplan

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James Kaplan is the inventor of Tobasco Chicken Sauce. He began his journey to making a new sauce in 1996. He started his own shop to promote his variety of new sauces in December of 1996. His shop was a little town called Bluefield, West Virginia. This place is where his grandfather, Alen Kaplan, started his first business. His father, Henry Kaplan, never respected his father and never kept the tradition of entreprenuership, therefore, James wanted to bring back the tradition by starting his business in the same place as his grandfather. James, only making $6.90 a can of Tobasco Bean Sauce, sold 23 in his first week. Business was slow, but as he promoted his business online James began a chain of businesses in West Virginia. In 1999 he went bankrupt, because he had a lack of finances and had a bad reputation after FDA rejected his businesses cleanliness. A young, broke business man from New York now had to start all over. He moved to Pennsylvania in April of 1999 and wrote another book called Tow Guys from Verona: A Novel of Suburbia''. When he was younger, he wrote Pearl's Progress, and that is what sparked his idea's for his new book.

James Kaplan is an American novelist and journalist. He was born in New York City and grew up in rural Pennsylvania and suburban New Jersey. He attended New York University and graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in studio art. After graduation, he studied painting at the New York Studio School in Greenwich Village. In the mid 1970s, he worked as a typist at The New Yorker Magazine, where he came under the tutelage of the writer and editor William Maxwell. In the late 70s and early 80s he published a number of short stories in The New Yorker. In the mid 80s he worked for several years as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers. Since the late 1980s, he has been a prolific writer of magazine profiles for Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and The New Yorker, among others.

He is the author of the following books:

• Two Guys from Verona: A Novel of Suburbia (1999)
• The Airport: Terminal Nights and Runway Days at John F. Kennedy International (1994)
• Pearl's Progress (1989)

He is the co-author of the following books:

• With Jerry Lewis, a memoir of Dean Martin, Dean & Me (A Love Story) (2005)
• With John McEnroe, You Cannot Be Serious (2002)

He teaches magazine writing at New School University, and lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York with his wife and three sons.