1. Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, by Lucy Knisley

Lucy Knisley's new book Relish is, as far as I know, the first of its kind: a graphic memoir of culinary experiences. Lucy takes us through a childhood growing up with parents who loved to cook, eat, and grow food. She celebrates her early love of squid and smelly cheese, and bemoans a parental lockdown on sugary cereals and all junk food. Several recipes are studded throughout the book, beautifully drawn and delicious-looking even in cartoon form. The book's illustrations are both adorable and expressive. Knisley is a truly talented artist who made me believe more food memoirs should be illustrated - after all, we eat with our eyes.

2. An Illustrated Guide to Cocktails, by Orr Shtuhl and Elizabeth Graeber

Along the illustrated theme, Orr Shtuhl and Elizabeth Graeber's An Illustrated Guide to Cocktails is a bar gem. Penguins and historical figures make repeat appearances in this recipe book and stories of alcoholic drinks. You'll accumulate fun facts, like the origination of the phrase "the real McCoy," and delicious recipes for traditional cocktails. Shtuhl's lighthearted tone and Graeber's drawings give the book a childlike quality not often found in books about drinking.

3. The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage

This collection of essays in The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage highlights the many ways that families use food to share stories, bridge divides, and pass on legacies. In the title story, a couple addresses marital strife through a cassoulet party each week. Other authors share their struggle with food heritage and how food memories shape their identities. The stories are touching and at times brutally honest. Anyone who's ever argued and celebrated with family over a kitchen table can relate to these stories.

4. Kosher

Timothy D. Lytton's book Kosher documents the history of kosher certification in the U.S. It exhaustively covers the legal challenges created by the five major kosher certification companies. Lytton describes how consumers have rallied around consistent and transparent certification, and how the consumer base for kosher products has expanded beyond the Jewish community. Highly recommended for policy wonks or those interested in how private certification works in this competitive industry.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her other work can be found at her website.

1. Behind the Kitchen Door

Saru Jayaraman is an incredible force. As co-founder and co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United), she has fought for the rights of food service workers for over ten years. In her first book, she tells the harrowing stories of dozens of restaurant workers fighting to make ends meet. With a minimum wage of $2.13 an hour and no paid sick days, restaurant employees face incredible obstacles. Jayamaran shares their experiences with grace and respect, while showing the reader how to join the fight for service industry justice. I highly recommend Behind the Kitchen Door for its unblinking take on inequality in one of the largest industries in the U.S.

2. The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food and Drink

Kevin Young's anthology of food and drink-related poems is perfect for the literary food lover. The book contains poems from William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath, and Langston Hughes among dozens of others. My favorite piece is "cutting greens" by Lucille Clifton: "...i taste in my natural appetite / the bond of live things everywhere." This sentiment rings true to the tone of the book overall—a celebration of eating, cooking, family, and sensuality.

3. Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable, and Secure Food Systems

This thick book by Philip Ackerman-Leist, a professor at Green Mountain College, is something of a guide for building a local food movement. He provides an overview of issues in the food system, from chemical run-off to commodity trading, as well as a substantial section on moving forward with regional and systemic change. Ackerman-Leist has a nuanced understanding of the whole U.S. food network. This is a great book for readers interested in learning how communities around the country are improving their food quality, and those looking for inspiration for their own local foodsheds.

4. A Year in the Village of Eternity: The Lifestyle of Longevity in Campodimele, Italy

Campodimele is a small village in Italy with a population of 671. So why are we reading about it? Because the average lifespan of Campodimele residents is 95 years old, about ten years longer than the average Italian. Tracey Lawson set out to discover why. She writes elegantly about each month's cuisine in Campodimele, and embraces the agricultural lifestyle that many residents still enjoy, producing the bulk of their own foods and preparing simple, traditional cuisine. Dozens of authentic recipes accompany the narrative, making this "hyper-Mediterranean" diet accessible to the home cook.

5. Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America

As Executive Director of Food and Water Watch, Wenonah Hauter has spent years working on issues of environmental sustainability. In Foodopoly, she takes a hard look at how corporations have taken over agricultural production in the U.S. From Monsanto to Tyson, she explains corporate dominance and the problems it has created for small family farms. She believes strongly in the power of organizing and rallying young people around the cause of sustainability. This book presents difficult information, but with a hopeful ending and plenty of well-designed infographics.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

1. It's Not You, It's Brie: Unwrapping America's Unique Culture of Cheese

I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but Kirstin Jackson's new book drew me in with its adorable cartoon-cheese illustrations. Each chapter focuses on a different style of cheese, from crumbly to chewy to mixed milk. She also tells the stories of four or five different producers of each cheese type, giving the reader an inside look at how cheese is made and by whom. The book has a personal, homey feel and definitely gave me some new ideas for cheeses to try. I was particularly happy to see a shout-out to Rhode Island's Narragansett Creamery Queso Fresco. Woo!

2. Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing

Food writer Brett Anderson edited this fabulous collection of tales of Southern food. The selections are drawn from a variety of publications, from memoirs to magazines, and take on a variety of story-telling formats. I really enjoyed learning about dishes I haven't had a chance to taste yet. The South has such a strong food culture, and Cornbread Nation, Volume 6 shines a light on this important and historical element of American culinary tradition.

3. Paris, My Sweet: A Year in the City of Light (And Dark Chocolate)

Amy Thomas was offered her dream job working for Louis Vuitton in Paris, and she couldn't turn it down. Despite leaving her best friends, her family, and New York City behind, she packed up her broken French and love for sweets and moved across the ocean. Her memoir tracks a year spent adjusting to Parisian life, eating at every bakery she could find, and trying to build a community in a foreign land. This is a light read, but is engaging enough to keep you reading. Plus she has plenty of travel tips if you're headed to Paris with a sweet tooth!

4. Thomas Jefferson's Creme Brulee: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Hemings Introduced French Cuisine to America

Known most widely for his gardening, Thomas Jefferson was a huge foodie. Thomas J. Craughwell tells the story of Jefferson's travels abroad and how he and his chef brought back novel culinary traditions from France. Among the plants he brought to Monticello were figs, grapes, and pistachios. He received a great wine education as well. Throughout the book, Craughwell does a nice job paralleling the historical context with Jefferson's consumption education. This is a good book for history buffs as well as food lovers.

5. Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter

Over the past fifty years, we've experienced a huge loss of biodiversity in the U.S. The result of this loss on food history is dramatic. David Buchanan walks us through the histories of many lost crop varieties and explores their importance in modern-day cultivation. His book is not a manifesto for a specific type of growing; rather, he finds lost foods and emphasizes the importance of biodiversity to the future of farming. A beautifully written and informative book.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

[Cover: Amazon]

When I was in elementary school, I had a loving mother who packed me homemade lunches every day. (She's still very loving, but unfortunately I must now make my own lunch.) Alongside a hand-written note, fruit, and snack—Dunkables come to mind—was a tightly wrapped sandwich. For five years and approximately five hundred lunches, I dined on peanut butter and jelly, the gloriously simple sandwich made of carbohydrates and joy. I don't remember having a specific peanut butter brand preference, but chances are we stuck to the classics, Skippy or Jif.

After heading to college, I learned of many other types of peanut butter. There's the goopy, oil-separated kind that I still can't quite figure out how to spread; there's the mixed-with-jelly kind that a prior housemate enjoyed, much to the revulsion of the rest of us; there's the alternative nut butters that, with their rough textures and lack of sweetening, seem to miss the point of peanut butter. All of these peanut butters find their place in the pantries of families across the country. But I'd never given much thought to the history and development of all of these peanut butter cousins. Thankfully, Jon Krampner investigated.

In Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food, Krampner takes us through decades of peanut butter evolution and appreciation. A PB-lover himself, Krampner came to this project as a biographer. He soon learned that the history of peanut butter was far more research-intensive than a biography, and necessitated learning about agriculture, botany, politics, nutrition, advertising, and more. The consequence of his study is a comprehensive and easy-to-read guide to the most American of sandwich spreads.

Peanut butter first came to the U.S. in the 1890's, but ground peanuts were being used in South American and West African cuisines decades earlier. The very first peanut butter was marketed in 1898 in Australia. John Harvey Kellogg (famed nutritionist and inventor of corn flake cereal) obtained the first American patent for producing peanut butter in 1897, and by the early 1900's, dozens of peanut butter brands were popping up around the country. These early butters were largely unsweetened and rather bland; many of their recipes would soon adapt to the increasingly sweet-tooth American palate.

Over the decades, the American peanut butter field has narrowed to just a few major players. These brands control relatively stable segments of the market; minor differences in spreadability and sweetness draw customer loyalty. Americans consume about 1.5 billion pounds of peanut butter each year, but actually aren't the world's largest consumers of the stuff. That award goes to the Dutch, who also have a thriving peanut butter industry. Many countries sustain their own cultures of peanut butter, such as Haiti and Germany. But many others have snubbed peanut butter, resulting in the food's image as a purely American product, for better or for worse.

Creamy and Crunchy is a smooth read. (Sorry.) Krampner provides a sort of whirlwind tour through the history and production of peanut butter, and brings us to the modern day, as the product faces obstacles of food safety and health concerns. He also gives his personal recommendations on the best kinds of peanut butter in all of the major categories: best crunchy, best creamy, best using Spanish peanuts, and so on. If nothing else, this book will certainly make you crave a spoonful of the good stuff, and fill you with tons of party-friendly peanut butter facts.

More on Peanut Butter

• Taste Test: Peanut Butter, Creamy
• Taste Test: Crunchy Peanut Butter, No-Stir
• Taste Test: Crunchy Peanut Butter, Stir

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

[Cover: Amazon]

For my last review of 2012, it seems only natural to write about Best Food Writing 2012, edited by Holly Hughes. This is the twelfth year of the Best Food Writing series, and the most enjoyable anthology I've read in a long time. The contributors range from popular bloggers like Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, to accomplished authors like John T. Edge, and all levels of notoriety in between. I appreciated the diversity of topics, writing styles, and sources incorporated into Hughes' collection, a testament to her desire to provide a complete and rich representation of the food writing scene.

Happily, many of the pieces included in Best Food Writing are from books you've read about on this site in the past year—Tomatoland, An Everlasting Meal, and A Spoonful of Promises to name a few. Other pieces are from the New York Times, Gastronomica, or popular food magazines like Food & Wine and Saveur. But in addition to these high-profile foodie readers, there were also interesting and off-beat pieces from non-traditional food writing sources.

Contributions ranged from serious to light-hearted. Maureen O'Hagan tackles the tricky topic of childhood obesity through the eyes of two obese teens, providing a perspective on junk food and overeating that is rarely heard in the media. Kevin Pang tells the story of Brandon Baltzley, an up-and-coming chef struggling with a cocaine addiction. But more hilarious food reflections are provided by Joel Stein, who entertains with a piece on finding his manhood through barbecue, and David Leite, who recounts his Thanksgiving baking catastrophes.

Over the years, this series has incorporated more online writers into its pages, giving credibility and recognition to authors who primarily publish their work digitally. One of the most touching pieces in the book is from James Beard Award-winning blogger Elissa Altman, of the popular Poor Man's Feast. Her short memoir about her mother's egg obsession—and how different preparations indicated whether she was in a good mood or in a rage—is both heart-wrenching and funny. Such pieces show how creative and wide-ranging food writing can be.

Best Food Writing 2012 lives up to its claim—the work included in this anthology is some of the best food writing I've read this year. The book succeeds in demonstrating the depth and creativity that food writers can accomplish. A must-read for aspiring food writers, obsessive readers, or those just looking for a fast, enjoyable read this holiday season.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

[Cover: Amazon]

It's a given that many of you reading this review are, ahem, serious eaters. As such, you probably eat in restaurants a fair amount. Whether they're new hot spots or your favorite local diner, many serious eaters enjoy spending money and time eating out. Frequently we laud the chefs behind the delicious food on our plates and thank the wait staff for personalized service. But less often recognized are the brains behind the whole operation: the restaurateurs who invested the time, money, and emotion in opening and growing a successful eatery.

Nicholas Landers, the restaurant critic for the Financial Times, pays homage to the men and women behind the scenes of some of the world's great restaurants in his book The Art of the Restaurateur. A former restaurateur himself—at L'Escargot in Soho—Landers appreciates the energy and investment required of restaurateurs. Opening even one restaurant can be all-consuming, and many of the entrepreneurs in this book have opened several.

Landers interviews high-profile restauranteurs around the world from Joe Bastianich and Danny Meyer, both restaurant moguls in the U.S., to Juli Soler of El Bulli in Spain, to Marie-Pierre Troigros of Maison Troisgras in France. These successful individuals often share similar experiences and insights. Whether they came from a restaurant family or broke into the business, they frequently started their flagship eateries with little cash and only a dream of what the place could and would become. They chose chefs and staff who could propel their vision forward. They placed chefs in the spotlight while often preferring to stay behind the scenes, managing personnel and food quality, eating anonymously in their own establishments as often as possible.

One of my favorite profiles is of Maguy Le Coze, the powerful woman behind Le Bernardin in New York City. Many casual eaters would probably assume that Eric Ripert, the restaurant's famous chef, owns the place. But Le Coze has run Le Bernardin restaurants for over four decades—a feat that marks her, according to Landers, as "the only female restaurateur to have run a restaurant at this level for so many years." She has taken on Ripert as a partner and the two of them remain at the forefront of French cuisine.

The Art of the Restaurateur is a substantial book. Telling the stories of so many restaurants and interesting people takes many pages. But to break up the narrative, there are beautiful line drawings sprinkled throughout the chapters to illustrate how each restaurant is decorated. These illustrations added a playful and humanizing element—appropriate for a book that strives to show the real human faces behind several dozen culinary institutions.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

VIEW SLIDESHOW: The 10 Best Non-Cookbook Food Books of 2012

I read a lot of books for this job—about 52 a year, in fact. In all this page turning, there are many books that are just not memorable. But luckily, there tend to be many more that are. Here are my picks for the best non-cookbook food books of 2012. Now you know just what to buy for your pickiest literary friends this holiday season.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

[Cover: Amazon]

A prolific writer on food history and culture, Massimo Montanari has lots to say about why we eat the ways we do. His book Let the Meatballs Rest, and Other Stories About Food and Culture is a compilation of 100 short pieces. The works explore the origins of specific ingredients and ways of cooking, and how culturally-specific diets have shaped human society for centuries.

Many of Montanari's pieces detail specific foods and their rise to popularity. He describes how eating garlic was considered to be a damning mark of poverty in the tenth century. Only peasants would dare to eat such strong and foul-smelling food! When potatoes were introduced to Europe in the sixteenth century, their mild flavor and "subterranean nature" made them unappealing to even the lowest class. They only began to be cultivated when widespread hunger necessitated high production of easy-to-grow crops. And the eggplant, today so associated with Italian cuisine but initially brought to Europe by Arabs, was quickly relegated to "the lower class and Jews." These firm distinctions led to the development of a peasant cuisine that would later be co-opted by the upper class.

Montanari also explores alternative philosophies about consumption and restraint. Monks restricted their lifestyles substantially, but were encouraged to develop a rich and interesting food culture. Monks often made more complex foodstuffs such as jams and cheeses. And many upper-class people in the tenth century adopted the philosophy of adapting one's diet and eating patterns to the changing seasons. This intentionality allegedly made one more adaptable to unpredictable life events.

Montanari makes a strong case that beauty and beautiful food shouldn't be "the privilege of the few." Beauty by his definition means being conscious of the environment, paying attention to seasonality, and being thankful to those who produce our food. I liked how in this and other instances, Montanari broke down the way currently view ingredients and eating styles. He demonstrates that fundamentally and historically, these views are entirely a product of our time and culture.

Let the Meatballs Rest is a nice read, though the language is a bit stilted. This may be a result of the fact that Montanari is a professor and academic, or because the book was translated from Italian. It has the feel of older, classic food authors like Brillat-Savarin or early M.F.K Fisher. But his tone isn't didactic; rather, the reader learns about food history while still absorbing Montanari's lessons that we should all appreciate other cultures and ways of eating.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

[Cover: Amazon]

While preparing the half-dozen side dishes and desserts I was commissioned to make for my family Thanksgiving, I used the following implements: whisk, knife, cutting board, 2-quart saucepan, 3-quart saucepan, baking sheet, spatula (rubber and metal), three casseroles, measuring cups, teaspoon, far too many forks, and a wooden spoon. And all that while making a concerted effort to eyeball measurements and reduce the frenzy and mess inevitable when I'm tasked with too many cooking projects. I am very thankful that my family's kitchen is well-stocked with multiples of each of the listed tools and more. And that I have a whole afternoon to clean before everyone comes home from work.

Given my heavy use of kitchen equipment, it seemed an appropriate day to read Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat, by Bee Wilson. Wilson, a prolific food writer, looks at the development of cooking techniques and implements around the world. She traces these devices through centuries of recorded history and up to the modern day.

Each chapter is themed around a specific cooking need: "Pots and Pans," "Measure," "Fire," "Ice," and so on. Within those topics, Wilson discusses how ancient civilizations used early adaptations of now commonplace technologies. The first bowls and pots were, unsurprisingly, hollowed-out gourds and plants. When bronze and other metals came along, vessels were made out of more permanent and valuable materials. Not much has changed in the basic construction of a pot, but the durability and conductivity of various materials has been studied closely to create the best cooking device.

Some kitchen questions remain lively debates, such as: what is the most effective type of heat for cooking? Throughout history we've used coal, wood, gas, and oil in efforts to find an effective and safe heat source. Cooks still take sides on which medium cooks most evenly and cleanly. (I think I'd choose gas, but there's nothing quite like the smell of a wood stove...)

I found Wilson's chapters on eating implements—forks, spoons, knives, chopsticks, etc.—quite interesting. There were significant changes in public opinion about these implements throughout history, for instance, in the 1600s, a man would never have eaten from a fork. But by the 1800s, forks were universal in European culture. Wilson also explores the development of the complicated rules about how to use chopsticks. She observes that while not every culture uses forks or knives, "all the peoples of the world use spoons," a truism that provides interesting reflection on human character and culture.

Consider the Fork doesn't delve too deeply into specific cultures or traditions of cooking—her lens is too broad to focus on small details. But the book provides an interesting perspective on the dozens of implements now considered commonplace in most well-stocked American kitchens. Especially during Thanksgiving week, when a broken stand mixer or Cuisinart on the fritz can create a tizzy of stress, it's wise to reflect on the centuries of technological innovation that allowed us to stock our dirty kitchens in the first place.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

[Cover: Amazon]

Invasive plants and animals are often responsible for destroying natural habitats and taking the place of native species. Such disruption can cause a loss of biodiversity and result in permanent environmental damage. Jackson Landers, hunter and author of popular blog The Locavore Hunter, decided to address the issue of invasive animals as best he knew how: by hunting them. In Eating Aliens: One Man's Adventures Hunting Invasive Animal Species, he details sixteen months spent traveling around the country and tracking down invasive species. Along the way, he meets plenty of characters and samples odd—though usually delicious—cuisine.

What I most admired about this book was Landers' balanced and curious tone. Though most of his hosts in various locales were themselves hunters of invasive animals, Landers still appreciates the unique beauty that even invasive species bring to an ecosystem. He is obviously in favor of hunting, but does so conscientiously, and speaks of it with a clear awareness that the reader may or may not hold the same opinions as him.

Most of the species that Landers discusses have unfamiliar names. Lionfish, black spiny-tailed iguanas, nutria, aoudad. What are these creatures? Lionfish are aggressive, venomous sea dwellers with a propensity to sting and occasionally kill nearby snorkelers. Nutria are dubbed "swamp rats" for their similarity in appearance to a giant rodent. Black spiny-tailed iguanas are, well, self-explanatory, and apparently taste like chicken.

And Landers would know—he cooked and ate every invasive animal he was able to kill. From wild pigs to green crabs to Chinese mystery snails, he sampled them all. His overarching philosophy is that the primary way humans can control invasive animals is to eat them out of existence. But first, he had to see how they tasted. Most of the creatures tasted something like their more common counterparts—pig like pig, lionfish like carp, iguana like, well, chicken. By simple grilling, these maligned animals became dinner.

Landers is a vivid and engaging author. His knowledge of hunting is extensive, but he's able to talk about the sport in an open, accessible, and non-prescriptive way. I found myself surprisingly drawn into his adventures and enthusiastically turning the pages. Even if invasive species themselves don't pique your interest, Eating Aliens is worth a read for its literary value alone.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

[Cover: Amazon]

"Life is meals."

This is the powerful, simple message that Alison Adato leaves the reader with at the end of Smart Chefs Stay Slim: Lessons in Eating and Living from America's Best Chefs. The book discusses how men and women who are surrounded by food all day—whose jobs necessitate them to taste in excess of 4,000, 6,000, or even 10,000 calories a day—are able to maintain healthy lifestyles and a trim waistline. The book generally has a healthy outlook on proper eating: you should appreciate your food, don't deprive yourself, and embrace the many important meals that make up your life.

The book is organized into 92 lessons, each of which provides a tip or trick for eating better. Most tips have to do with the lifestyles of chefs themselves: "Smart chefs eat oatmeal;" "They have a routine;" even "They eat roast chicken." For her book, Adato interviewed 39 famous chefs and food celebrities, from Michael Psilakis to Joe Bastianich to Alex Guarnaschelli. She integrates the insights of all of these chefs into nicely-organized chapters based around how to eat. She is able to seamlessly wind together the thoughts and opinions of chefs who cook all types of cuisine and are of all shapes and sizes.

Indeed, the one uniting factor among these chefs is that all of them have struggled with their weight at some point—and have also succeeded in shedding those pounds. Adato emphasizes that she made a point not to interview twenty-something chefs whose metabolisms would allow them to stay trim no matter how many chocolate cake tastings they had to endure. Instead, she opted for slightly older and more experienced chefs whose insights into health and dieting come from true experience.

By and large, these chefs are not judgmental or prescriptive about diet—most of their philosophies can be summed up into some combination of exercising moderately, enjoying small portions of satisfying food, and allowing indulgences. There are some, like Joe Bastianich or Nate Appleman, who use extreme exercise as a means of controlling their weights. But most of these chefs are normal folk who use the same dieting techniques that any non-marathoning person might.

Smart Chefs Stay Slim accomplishes its goal of sharing helpful tips for dieting and weight loss, and also provides many inspirational tales for dieters who might feel overwhelmed or exhausted by the thought of making significant eating changes. I was a little concerned that at no point does Adato really question the use of weight and trimness as measures of health and dietary success. It's an assumption throughout the book that being thin is every chef's (and every person's) ultimate health goal, and that this goal is appropriate for all of them. But at the same time, chefs of all ages, genders, and weights are represented and each bring a different perspective on dieting. This book was encouraging and optimistic—plus it includes lots of delicious and healthy recipes straight from the kitchens of internationally-renowned chefs.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

[Cover: Amazon]

From Edgar Allan Poe to Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac to William Faulkner, there seem to be few famous writers who weren't known for, at some point in their lives, overindulging in drink. Ernest Hemingway was one such figure. His works include frequent references to drinking, and characters are often ascribed specific drinks as emblems of their personalities. Philip Greene, who is Treasurer of the Museum of the American Cocktail, researched Hemingway's personal history with dozens of drinks and chronicled those stories in To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Comparison.

Hemingway's favorite drink was reportedly a Mojito, but Greene disputes this common myth. He emphasizes Hemingway's love of gin and whiskey, particularly in the form of whiskey sodas and gin gimlets. These drinks came up frequently in Hemingway's writing—in fact, Greene provides an index at the start of each chapter detailing in which essays and chapters these drinks can be found. The whiskey soda is discussed in numerous chapters of fifteen separate works, including A Farewell to Arms, A Moveable Feast, and The Sun Also Rises.

Along with recipes, Greene also provides literary and historical context for the drinks. There are many colorful tales of Hemingway's excessive consumption with friends and other authors. On one occasion, Hemingway wrote that he and his friend Guillermo began drinking Daiquiris at 10:30 a.m. and continued drinking until nightfall. They each drank 17 double frozen daiquiris—each with 4 ounces of rum—and, as Hemingway reports, "both felt good."

To Have and Have Another is light and engaging, a fast read that works as both a dictionary of cocktails and a reference text on Hemingway's works and personal life. Once I delved into the book and Hemingway's history, though, I was a little saddened by the degree to which alcohol slowly took over his life. Greene does a good job of negotiating Hemingway's complicated relationship with alcohol, and the role it played a role in his erratic moods and the depression that eventually led to his death. Like many great writers, Hemingway's relationship with alcohol was likely abusive. But this book is still enlightening and provides a nice look at cocktail history—with plenty of warnings to enjoy the drinks in moderation, and not necessarily at Hemingway's level of consumption.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

[Cover: Amazon]

For Jenna Weber, food has always been a comfort. She pens the blog Eat Live Run, which provides recipes, stories about Weber's life, and now plenty of advertising for her memoir, White Jacket Required: A Culinary Coming-of-Age Story. In this book, she discusses how heading to culinary school helped her find her way through important and difficult life decisions, and ultimately led her to a meaningful career and relationship.

After college, Weber realized she wanted to be a food writer, but in her mind, this career necessitated knowledge of all the ins and outs of cooking. She began her journey in food writing with her blog, which she used to keep family and friends updated on her experiences at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Florida. She specialized in baking and pastry at LCB, which landed her externships at bakeries and restaurants post-graduation. Her intention was never to become a chef or professional cook—something that perplexed many of her fellow classmates and co-workers. Rather, she graduated with a few culinary tricks up her sleeve and an ability to talk intelligently about food and cooking.

Her first few jobs were difficult. She hostessed part-time, worked the morning shift in a bread show, went without sleep and struggled to see her path through the fog of everyday work. Her long-time boyfriend was in another city, and their relationship was beginning to strain under her complicated schedule and lack of desire to move to Tampa to be with him. And in the middle of it all, her younger brother—who Jenna hadn't talked about much until this point in the book—died in a freak accident.

In the aftermath of her brother's death, Weber completely broke down. She mourned intensely and intimately with her family, and after several months of living with her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, decided it was time to move on to a new phase in her life. She took a job in California writing about wine, and without much preparation packed up her life and moved. The book ends with her boarding a plane, hopeful and optimistic about the future.

Weber's writing style is narrative in focus. On the one hand, this makes the book feel very conversational. The reader is carried along the ups and downs of Weber's life throughout her early twenties, and her stories are personal and sometimes intense. Her recounting of her younger brother's sudden death is jarring and powerful in the context of an otherwise fluffy, happy-go-lucky book.

But more often, Weber's stories lack some universality. Her stories are uniquely hers: great for a blog, but a bit limited for a full-length book. Though some pieces of White Jacket Required are meaningful and lasting, most of the book reads more like a string of blog posts than a cohesive book. I'd check out Weber's website to get a sense for her tone and background before investing in a copy of her memoir.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

[Cover: Amazon]

Home cooks—and professional cooks, for that matter—are often divided into two camps: those who use recipes and those who don't. Daniel Duane became acutely aware of this divide during his adventure cooking his way through several of Alice Waters' cookbooks, an experience he details in How to Cook Like a Man: A Memoir of Cookbook Obsession. He cooked Alice Waters' recipes for friends, family, and eventually famous chefs as his culinary education took him around the country—and world—reporting on how to cook.

Duane immersed himself in the kitchen soon after becoming a new father. Unsure of how to find his place in a household that was suddenly so baby-oriented, he turned to cooking as an outlet. He first tackled Chez Panisse Vegetables, mastering the techniques and recipes—from simple steaming to complex sauces—contained in the seminal book. He then moved on to The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, The Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook, and Chez Panisse Cooking. He rarely cooked the same recipe twice, and frequently hosted dinner parties and events to maintain a consistent audience for his experiments.

Duane's particular interest in Alice Waters came from a unique personal connection: she had been his preschool teacher. His love of her cooking technique led him to visit her in her quaint home in California, where she made him a simple lunch and affirmed his hopes that her cooking philosophy was as straightforward and ingredient-driven as her cookbooks implied.

He then went on to explore other chefs' techniques and had the opportunity to write about them for various publications. He dines and cooks with Thomas Keller and Fergus Henderson. From each chef he learns different techniques, tricks, and skills to bring home to his own kitchen and his growing family.

How to Cook Like a Man is well-written; Duane is an experienced writer and his narrative is beautiful and flowing. But it is also a bit confusing. I wasn't quite sure what the "like a man" part of the book's title meant; Duane does wrestle peripherally with negotiating his father's opinion on his newfound obsession with cooking, but the issue didn't seem to play a central role in the book. But How to Cook Like a Man does provide a fun recounting of an adventure through several cookbooks' worth of recipes, and the lessons that can be learned by straying from those rigid instructions.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.

[Cover: Amazon]

Beth M. Howard was approaching two milestones on August 19, 2009: her seventh wedding anniversary and the finalization of her divorce. Her husband Marcus was on vacation in Portland without her, and in just a few hours he would sign their divorce papers. They were still in love, but marriage had become too difficult. As a high-powered executive he traveled all the time, taking her with him on adventures but also uprooting her life multiple times. She was ready for a new chapter of her life. And then he died.

Marcus's sudden death, caused by a heart defect he'd had since birth, racked Howard to the core. Unable to cope with the grief of losing her husband, coupled with the guilt of feeling as though her insistence on divorce had killed him from heartbreak or stress, she spiraled. She stayed with friends for months on end, grieving so deeply that she thought she might never recover. But she managed to eventually pull herself out of that grief, and she describes her healing process in her memoir, Making Piece: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Pie.

Where does pie come into this story, you might ask? Howard had been an avid pie baker her whole life, to the point that she had quit a quite lucrative job at an internet start-up to work full-time in a Malibu pie shop several years before Marcus's death. During her mourning process, she quickly realized that pie was the only activity keeping her from losing control. So she set out to discover how other people created and served pie.

She embarked on a documentary road trip to diners and fairs across the country in search of delicious homemade pies. She discovered secret recipes, was chosen to judge several pie contests, and met dozens of welcoming and amazing people along the way. She includes the recipes for some of her favorite pies in the back of the book—French silk, banana cream, apple, peach.

Howard eventually found herself in her home state of Iowa, where she now lives in the famous American Gothic House. She runs a pie stand out of her front yard, selling pie to tourists and neighbors, and has found some peace. This memoir is wrenching from the first page—Howard holds nothing back about her grieving process, sharing even the darkest moments with the reader. Though this was at first a bit of a turn-off—I thought it was a light read about pie!—I was soon flipping through the pages eagerly, hoping for the moments when things started to look up for Howard. Mourning the loss of a spouse is so deeply personal, but Howard honors the reader with an honest recounting of her struggle. Making Piece is beautifully written and, though sad, ultimately hopeful.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.