This is a very attractive book. It appears to be a definitive guide to cooking beans. Great for the cook like me, who lazily uses canned instead of dried beans much of the time. This is the book to move me away from canned (even though the author readily agrees that canned beans have their place in the kitchen).  Recipes from around the world are included, as well as three introductory chapters on the history and general cooking of beans. While not a vegetarian cookbook, many of the recipes are highlighted as vegetarian, while others have a vegetarian option clearly spelled out.

This is not a cookbook per se, although it does have a whole section of recipes at the end. Instead, it is the memoir of Judith Jones' life and career as one of the most influential editors of cookbooks in the twentieth century. Jones published Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Jones also discovered and published Marcella Hazan, Claudia Roden, and countless other great cookbook authors. And, not surprisingly, Jones loves food and cooking and recounts with vigor the impact these pasttimes have had on her life and her career. Plus, it's a fun read!

This is a beautiful cookbook, just like the title claims. Large format, gorgeous photos of Italy and of the food in the recipes. I have found lots of things that I want to make from it. But it is such a coffee-table formatted book that I have a hard time finding space for it in the actual kitchen.

La Varenne Pratique is a wonderful cooking-school-in-a-book kind of book. It has many recipes but is not exactly a cookbook. It is more a course on cooking and using the kitchen, with tons of explanations and great illustrations on everything from varieties of cheese to a diagram of butcher's cuts of a cow. I learned to make my own ricotta cheese from this book.

You can't go wrong with Paula Wolfert. All of her books are terrific.