First published in 1933, this classic remains the gold standard for books on the five-centuries-old tea ceremony. Illustrated with traditional drawings of furniture and utensils, tearoom architecture, garden design, floor and ground plans, and beautiful black and white photographs of famous tea bowls, teahouses, and gardens, this volume will enlighten the reader to the intimate aspects of ancient Japanese history, philosophy, and culture.

Outside of sushi houses and the rare four-star restaurant, most Americans would never think to eat eel, but throughout Europe and Asia you can find it grilled, smoked, stewed, jellied, skewered, fried, baked, sauteed, and even cooked into an omelet. In Consider the Eel, acclaimed writer Richard Schweid takes the reader on a journey to show how this rich yet mild-tasting fish is a vibrant part of the world culture. Discover how eels, from their birth in the Sargasso Sea to their eventual end as a piece of kabayaki or as part of an Italian Christmas dinner, are one of our oldest and least understood gifts from the sea.

Greg Critser engages every aspect of American life to determine how we have made ourselves the second fattest people on the planet (after South Sea Islanders). Fat Land grapples with the expanding American waistline by tracing surprising connections among class, politics, culture, and economics. With groundbreaking research, Critser also investigates the dark metabolic underside of cheap fats and sugars and how their calories stick. Incisive, discerning, and disarmingly funny, Fat Land is a chilling but brilliantly rendered portrait of the cost in human lives — many of them very young lives — of America’s obesity epidemic.

Part memoir and part cookbook, this is one woman's cultural and culinary story, weaving childhood reminiscences with lovingly gathered recipes. With descriptions of the traditional Korean kitchen, preparations for special feast days, and the rituals of everyday family meals, author Hi Soon Shin Hepinstall draws an engaging portrait of a seldom glimpsed way of life.

Steeped soundly in the culture of the American cocktail scene—now entering the 21st century with a mixed roster of talented, wisecracking, colorful cocktailians—Lush Life is a veritable labor of love, nor simply for being a byproduct of husband and wife Dale and Jill DeGroff’s LA-born romance. The love here is for the people of the cocktail world, and it’s sketched, brushed, and suffused into each of Jill DeGroff’s pictures. And while the book is laid out generationally, Lush Life essentially unites its subjects under the proud patchwork banner of the bartender. A pictorial tour of the beating heart of the American cocktail scene, Lush Life recalls the old school cool of Al Hirschfeld’s “Speakeasies of 1932,” updated with its tech-savvy cast of mixologist up-and-comers and standby old-timers—all of it colored by DeGroff’s inimitable aesthetic eye. DeGroff’s portraits are the beating heart of the book, and they capture the spirit and nuance of this cast of cocktail-slinging characters with visual grace and spry, poetic wit. But lest she leave her reader thirsty, DeGroff includes recipes for favorite and famous drinks, as well as tales from behind the bar and occasional odd remembrances. In the end the whole experience is akin to an evening spent among friends, leaning up against the polished wood of a favorite local bar.

With over sixty years in the restaurant business, Big Sur’s renowned Nepenthe restaurant is still an unwavering symbol of bohemian culture and culinary tradition, as much now as it was when it was founded by the Fassett family six decades ago. My Nepenthe compiles Fassett family history, Nepenthe lore, and 85 diverse recipes to describe the unique cuisine and culture of the Southern California cultural landmark. The history of the place, including profiles of some of its most notable visitors and employees, is interwoven with family and restaurant recipes like “Lolly’s Famous Hotcakes” and “Herb-Stuffed Pork Loin Roast with Wine-Poached Quince.” The overall impact is to give the reader an intimate perspective on the cuisine and family tradition of Nepenthe’s as it’s evolved over the last several decades.

Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food shows that this enormously popular foodstuff is not merely a form of nourishment but the result of a lengthy process of cultural construction and the culmination of a wide array of knowledge, skills, and techniques. This volume shows that pasta has existed in various forms throughout Middle Eastern, Asian, and even North African culinary cultures long before its appearance in the West. Pasta is indeed the universal food.

Anissa Helou introduces her book with the Spanish saying that “Without bread, you cannot eat.” She covers nearly every type of Mediterranean bread imaginable, including flatbreads, pizza, focaccia, breadsticks, pies, and savory pastries, in over 130 recipes. The easy-to-follow instructions make even the slightly more complex recipes manageable. After reading this cookbook, you will agree that it is impossible to have a meal without bread.