The James Beard Foundation, housed in the late culinary master's home in New York's Greenwich Village, has become the center of American cuisine through its in-house dinners, awards, and generosity to young chefs. Any book by James Beard is an absolute essential to a serious cook's library. Still in print you will find Beard on Bread, James Beard's American Cookery, James Beard's New Fish Cookery, and James Beard's Menus for Entertaining. But don't pass by any out-of-print book you can find (either through our search or your own) written by or coauthored by James Beard.

    With your thumbs, you excavate the cheese. You choose your stringbeans one at a time. You pulp the nectarines and rape the sweet corn. You are something wonderful, you are—people of the city—and we, who are almost without exception strangers here, are as absorbed with you as you seem to be with the numbers on our hanging scales." So opens the title piece in this collection of John McPhee's classic essays, grouped here with four others, including "Brigade de Cuisine," a profile of an artistic and extraordinary chef; "The Keel of Lake Dickey," in which a journey down the whitewater of a wild river ends in the shadow of a huge projected dam; a report on plans for the construction of nuclear power plants that would float in the ocean; and a pinball shoot-out between two prizewinning journalists.

    The definitive book on traditional and authentic Spanish home cooking, trusted throughout Spain for more than 30 years, 1080 Recipes contains recipes from all Spanish regions, covering everything from appetizers to stews, from vegetables to desserts.

    A very large collection of the early works of Graham Kerr. This comprehensive book will be enjoyed by the gourmet cook. The recipes are clearly laid out and explained. Color photos with some step-by-step sequences.

    Illustrated hardcover book with dust jacket, 804 pages, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.

    The strongest animals, such as the bull, are vegetarians. Look at me. I have ten times as much good health and energy as a meat eater.'So said George Bernard Shaw, a vegetarian and also a man much concerned about his weight: the calories in each of his meals had to be carefully weighted and the total accurately calculated.His cook-housekeeper, Mrs Laden, looked after him for the sixteen years before his death in 1943 at the age of ninety-four. These are the recipes that made up the menus she devised for him - all delicious, satisfying, and all conforming to his standards of vegetarianism, low calory count and economy.