This big A to Z volume that covers everything from Carnival Foods to Culinary Ashes – and that’s just in the “C’s”. It’s the kind of book that once you’ve looked something up, you just want to keep on reading, and you do. [buy book]

Although some entries look a lot like those found on Wikipedia, this lavishly illustrated book give histories and botanical facts about all kinds of food plants, including herbs, grains, plants used in beverages, and of course fruits and vegetables. (Imagine, a whole page devoted to Hamburg parsley!) It doesn’t go deeply into varieties, but gives better than a broad picture. [buy book]

Few people take ten years to write a book about their life’s work, by hand on a yellow pad, but Wendy did just that and that deliberate effort shows. Wendy Johnson was the gardener at Green Gulch Farm when I was at Greens. She grew out many of the seeds I had bought in France for lettuces, herbs, and vegetables and we worked together for many years. I think of Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate as a book about deep gardening Even if you never plant a radish, it will increase your appreciation the biological miracle of plants and of life. [buy book]

This is a very different book from Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate, but like Wendy Johnson’s homage to a life with plants, it is a deeply considered, lyrical memoir about the farming life. It breaks apart our usual ideas about seasonality and other conventional approaches to food and farming and replaces them with a world that’s far more interconnected and complex. This is a read that made me step back and think, if this is what’s involved in farming, I can’t imagine a higher or more demanding calling. Both the work of Henry’s farm and this book are worthy of great respect. And, if that’s not enough, the book is a pleasure to read. [buy book]

I love the 100 recipes in this book, but the real gold is found in all the meticulously researched information about fruit and vegetable varieties, how they’re selected and raised, what makes for flavor or not. It’s the kind of intelligence we need to have if we’re to be good cooks and eaters. The author is food editor of the LA Times. [buy book]

Here’s a breakdown of fruit and vegetable varieties that consumers are likely to encounter in a supermarket since the books is produced by Melissa’s, a large produce broker in Los Angeles. While not deeply thorough, it will help you get your mangoes straight and introduce you to malanga, or yautia, as it’s also known. Some nutritional information in included, too. [buy book]

I turn to Cornucopia whenever I want to look up a specific food plant. Of all the source books I use, this is the one I use most frequently. If you’re dying to know about different fruit and vegetable varieties, when they were introduced, by whom, and their chief characteristics, this is your book. No pictures. No lyrical sentences. Just the facts. [buy book]

Organized by region and type of cheese, Jeff Roberts gives hundreds of sources for and descriptions of new American cheeses and their makers. A very useful book if you want a geographical reference in particular. [buy book]

This beautiful book covers many of our best cheeses and wines in detail through pairings, profiles and recipes. It’s one of our most appealing new books on cheese. [buy book]

Some very good olive oil is being made in America today, and Fran Gage’s handsome book helps the reader negotiate this new world. There’s a discussion of the newly revised standards of olive oil classification and a list of attributes and the conditions that cause them to turn “fusty” or “greasy”, plus a look at the standards established by the USDA and Californian. But most of the book is given over to profiles of today’s artisans and some 75 recipes, which are really fun to make. Resources are included, too. [buy book]

Whether you’re a gardener, need a source book, or just like to look at gorgeous vegetables, these books are a magnificent must. They point right to the glories of plant diversity and push the imagination beyond previously held ideas of squash, melons and tomatoes. [buy books]

David is a friend and someone I’ve cooked with professionally and I know and love his food. His book truly captures his voice and his ability to produce food that is indeed simple but somehow the best you ever tasted. [buy book]

I didn’t get to know this book until I was asked to write a preface for the most recent edition. That’s when I started to read between the lines of these very simple recipes. What I learned is that these are all recipes from the garden - O’Keeffe had a big vegetable garden in Abiquiu - which means that they must have been good and a joy to partake of. Just as delightful as the recipes (if not more so!) are the notes by the author who was O’Keeffe’s assistant (and sometimes cook) for many years. They often have nothing to do with the recipes, but everything to do with life with the artist and her very particular world. [buy book]

I love Eric Gower because he likes to walk right out to the edge of convention and try something new. I also like him because he’s also a nut for beautiful ceramics. (See The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen.) [buy book]

I love all of Jane Grigson’s books, especially for the stories behind the recipes. After you’ve read one of her books for an hour or so, Grigson’s witty voice starts spinning in your head. The recipes are somewhat dated, but I always come away with some good ideas, as well as some unforgettable insights. I will never forget her assertion that the breasts on Michelangelo’s “Spring” look just like a quince—and they do! [buy books]

Puglia is a part of Italy I’m very fond of, and I especially love the food of this region. There’s not a lot written about it so I treasure this little book by Nancy Harmon Jenkins. Not only are the recipes are really good, I have even used it as a travel guide in Puglia. This book has been re-released, but is not available in stores. You can go directly to Nancy’s Web Site to learn more. [buy book]

I adore Laura Calder’s funny, no-nonsense approach to good eating from her hang-out in Paris. She writes with flair and a zippy sense of humor as if it’s all a little throw away, but it isn’t. She’s a seriously good eater who’s having fun and wants you to, too. Plus her recipes are a surprise and a delight. [buy book]

Steven is a passionate bean man and I love cooking with his beans so I always look for him in various California farmers markets. Based on heirloom varieties, his recipes are some of the best bean recipes around. He’s got a Great Website too.[buy book]

Along with all books by Elizabeth David, Simple French Food inspired me greatly about the time I was opening Greens. More than thirty years later, I still cook from my old, worn copy, and it still inspires and pleases. The recipe head-notes are full of terrific ideas. The food isn’t all that simple to make - in fact it can involve some serious undertakings in the kitchen, but it tastes “simple” - that is clear and direct. [buy book]

Peggy’s book of dinner menus is a great read because she’s a good storyteller. Plus you learn so much about entertaining by watching her solve the puzzles each party presents. I don’t usually use menu cookbooks, but it’s rather a lot of fun to cook these. They’re good and they work. Peggy is a consummate and inspiring host. I know this because I’ve been a lucky guest her table. [buy book]

Mediterranean Hot and Spicy is Aglaia’s newest book and it’s a treat. It’s not too large, but every recipe is a surprise and straightforward to make, and the photographs are enticing, too. Hot and Spicy is especially suited to summer when eggplant, peppers and tomatoes abound, but I can see it will hold up in colder weather, too. I’m also very fond of her older book, The Foods of Greece, because it’s not so vast that you wind up never using it. Plus the pictures are so evocative that you stare and stare at them and pretty soon you’re there, in Greece. [buy books]

I have cooked from all of Paula Wolfert’s books, but being a devout grain and green eater, this is one of my favorites. I don’t think we do enough with either of these foods, but these recipes will convince anyone that we would be ridiculous not to indulge. These are seriously sensual and delicious recipes – among my favorites. I also recommend her Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean if you’re drawn to greens, lentils, olive oil, dill, cumin and yogurt and the other good flavors from Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Armenia, the Balkans etc. Good vegetarian dishes among the meaty ones. [buy book]

Clifford Wright always has the most interesting vegetable dishes. Think of Griddled Eggplants with Caraway Marinade and Green Peppercorns, for example. Since Cliff includes some plant history along with his recipes, if you’re drawn to ethnobotany as well as truly great food, you’re set. You can’t go wrong with any of Cliff’s books, but if you’re really into vegetables, especially those of the Mediterranean, this might become a favorite. [buy book]

This is my all time favorite dessert book, in part because I had the great pleasure of working for Lindsey Shere and know first-hand her fine appreciation of good fruits and her “less is more” approach. But even if I hadn’t had that experience, this would still be among my favorite cookbooks. It’s an intelligent book, sensitive to seasonality and fruit variety, with a distinct and delicate sensibility. [buy book]

Regan Daley has written a truly encyclopedic book on desserts and the science and art of making them. There is much information in this book and the recipes are really good, yet not for pastry chefs only. Many little twists and turns that make dessert interesting as well as good, like using stout in an oatmeal cake. [buy book]

Greg Patent is always interested in stories and histories as the background to recipes and that’s what makes his books so interesting A Baker’s Odyssey includes the voices of America’s immigrant bakers and the recipes that have long preserved their cultural identities. Here you’ll learn about Portuguese puff pastry and potica, while Baking in America will show you how to get your Boston Cream Pie exactly right. [buy books]

One of my favorite farmers, Anthony Boutard, introduced me to Edward Bunyard, who looks at fruit so closely that you realize you know nothing, but want to know more. This little book, published in 1929, has finally been reprinted with great words up front from Michael Pollan and David Karp. It shows what the world can be when diversity flourishes and one is not distracted by ersatz food or the Internet. [buy book]

California’s Great Central Valley feeds the nation through agri-business farms. But along its edges live small-scale growers of foods that don’t travel far, exquisite fruits born of passion and hands-on practices. In short, the food we want to eat. [buy book]

This book just came out and I haven’t read all of it, but I leapt at the title for there’s no way I’d rather think of the United States than as a nation of farmers. Written by farmer-writer Sharon Astyk, it’s an intelligent, thoughtful and exuberant book about our farming future. “Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil” is the banner over the title; below it says, basically, how all of us (from city farmers to kids with school gardens) “Can Overthrow our Destructive Industrial Agriculture and Give us Hope for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in a Changing World.” A big, important mission and one of those books you want to stamp with the words, “Required Reading”. [buy book]

Mike Madison is my brother. He’s a grower and writer who farms on the edge of the Central Valley. He, with his wife, Dianne, sells exquisite flowers, jams, and olive oil at the Davis Farmers’ Market. His book is a collection of wry, take-no-prisoner stories about farming and the trials and pleasures of selling at the farmers market. [buy book]

All books by Michael Pollan, including (or especially) Second Nature, on gardens. Despite the importance of The Ominvore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, Second Nature is my favorite of Pollan’s books. It’s personal, witty, smart, funny and sheds great insight on America’s romance with the lawn. [buy books]

This very important (and very readable) book traces our current food catastrophes to their roots, thus making sense out of where we are today. Things didn’t just start to go wrong, although it’s easy to feel that way. They’ve been going wrong for a good long time. I found that it helps to get that perspective, and then get back to work. It takes some of the pressure off and renews the spirit that’s needed to make good changes. [buy book]

Like Kitchen Literacy, this book is a big eye-opener, one that puts us in the middle of our own food culture and one of the sadder and meaner parts of our history. I found it troubling to discover how poorly enclave (i.e. ethnic) eaters have been treated in America and how relatively recent it is that an appreciation of their foods has come to light. Troubling and fascinating but something we should know about ourselves. [buy book]

This little book, which came out of the Food Writers’ Project, housed under the Works Progress Administration in the late l930s, gathers stories, photographs and recipes, comprising a portrait of our social history around food with its pictures of threshing crews, barn raising crews, community picnics and funerals, and a small but broad collection of American-ethnic recipes. [buy book]

This more recent book looks back to the era of America Eats and the WPA writer’s project, which was never completed except for the one volume by Nelson Algren. (It was unfinished when Pearl Harbor was attacked, bundled up and stored in the Library of Congress. Kurlansky is one of a few authors who has recently spent time sifting through boxes of material to come up with a portrait of a changing America with regards to what we ate (or ceased to eat) during WWII. As the subtitle says, this is about the “lost customs and recipes from a time when all eating was local.” Cod and Salt are two other must reads from Kurlansky. [buy book]

RAFT, which grew out of the model of Slow Food’s Ark of Taste, profiles American foods that are in danger of becoming lost to our culture, as well as some that have already succumbed to extinction. Recipes, photos, and a new geographical division of regions based on iconic foods, such as Cornbread Nation and Chile Nation. [buy book]

This sobering book about plants, people, politics and survival is one that we would do well to pay attention to, Where our Food Comes From relates the story of Nikolay Vavilov, the brilliant Russian ethnobotanist who traced the sources of essential food crops over five continents in search of genetic traits that might be used to prevent mass starvation. He also developed one of the greatest seed banks in the world, whose workers starved to death while protecting it during the siege of Lenningrad. [buy book]

The rest of the title is: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese, and that pretty much says what this book is about. That and the story of another New Yorker who’s moved to the country to do something with food. A few pages into Goat Song I saw that I had stumbled into the vicinity of a masterpiece. I cancelled dinners and stayed home utterly absorbed in Brad Kessler’s beautiful writing and the deep wisdom residing in these pages. Never again will I take even the most ordinary goat cheese for granted. There may not be a more lyrical enticement to move to the country and buy goats, but the reality of it all that’s involved is likely to keep most people home, safe and tidy in their familiar lives. [buy book]

My number one favorite book to give to people and read out loud, especially from the first 75 pages or so in which Eugene Walters describes the culture of kitchen life in Mobile in the 1920s and 30s. Milking the Moon is a treasure. [buy book]

This is the most touching and ultimately inspiring memoir about one man restoring his life while restoring bison to a Black Hills ranch. The description of 12 baby buffalo discovering their new world on a freezing winter’s night alone is worth the price. [buy book]

This is one of my favorite reads. The author spent a year in France, during which he planted a garden, then he wrote about his year. It’s charming, humbling and truly inspiring. It will make you want to do something - garden, write, leave your city apartment and go live some place where you don’t speak the language. Something! (We went to Ireland - in winter.) [buy book]