Book recommendations

At her beloved Dessert'D Organic Bake Shop, Mimi Council bakes cookies for everything. Now she shares her all-time favorite recipes in this mouthwatering cookbook. From soft and chewy basics to sandwich cookies, butter cookies to biscotti, French macarons to Florentines, you'll find easy-to-make recipes.

Finding plant-based recipes? Easy. Dealing with the social, cultural, and emotional aspects of being vegan in a nonvegan world? That's the hard part. "The Joyful Vegan" is here to help. Colleen Patrick-Goudreau has guided countless individuals through the process of becoming vegan. You can live ethically, eat healthfully, engage socially -- and remain a joyful vegan.

In just two generations, the world has undergone a massive shift from traditional, limited diets to more globalized ways of eating -- from bubble tea to quinoa, Soylent to meal kits. This is a book about the good, the terrible, and the avocado toast. A riveting exploration of the hidden forces behind what we eat, "The Way We Eat Now" explains how this food revolution has transformed our bodies, our social lives, and the world we live in.

"Healthy Cooking at Home" is ideal for home cooks of all skill levels whose goal is to provide their families with nutritious, tasteful meals every day of the week. This book will forever change the way you eat and how you cook.

Since its release twenty-five years ago, Shizuo Tsuji's encyclopedic and authoritative work has been the acknowledged "bible" of Japanese cooking. Unrivaled in its comprehensive explanation of ingredients, tools, and techniques, the book guides readers through recipes with clear prose, while technical points are made understandable with deftly executed line drawings. Much more than a collection of recipes, the cookbook is a masterful treatise of Japanese cuisine.

"Mastering the Art of French Cooking" is for both seasoned cooks and beginners who love good food and long to reproduce at home the savory delights of the classic cuisine, from the historic Gallic masterpieces to the seemingly artless perfection of a dish of spring-green peas. This beautiful book, with more than 100 instructive illustrations, is revolutionary in its approach.

Since the 2016 opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, its Sweet Home Café has become a destination in its own right. Showcasing the essential contributions African Americans have made to national cuisine, the café offers favorite dishes made with locally sourced ingredients and modern flavors. Drawing upon traditions of family and fellowship strengthened by shared meals, "Sweet Home Café Cookbook" celebrates African American cooking through recipes served by the café and dishes inspired by foods from African American culture.

Author Roy Moxham, once a tea planter himself, maps the impact of a monumental and imperial British enterprise. In this new volume, he offers a fully fascinating, and frequently shocking tale of England's tea trade -- of the lands it claimed, the people it exploited, the profits it garnered, and the cups it filled.

Dane Huckelbridge's masterful cultural history charts the wild, engrossing, and surprisingly complex story of our favorite alcoholic drink, showing how America has been under the influence of beer at almost every stage. From the earliest Native American corn brew to the waves of immigrants who brought with them their unique brewing traditions, to the seemingly infinite varieties of craft-brewed suds found on tap today, beer has claimed an outsized place in our culture that far transcends its few simple ingredients.

Located between the Great Rift Valley and the Nile, the cloud forests in southwestern Ethiopia are the original home of Arabica, the most prevalent and superior of the two main species of coffee being cultivated today. Deftly blending in the long, fascinating history of our favorite drink, Jeff Koehler takes readers from these forest beginnings along the spectacular journey of its spread around the globe.