Speed Dating with Books

In celebration of Cook's Illustrated twenty-fifth anniversary, this collection has been handpicked from issues of the magazine. You'll find the best versions of everything from everyday basics to complex, showstopping projects. From easy-peel hard boiled eggs to the perfect shrimp scampi, you'll find the answers to all of your cooking questions as well as innovative techniques, kitchen science, and foolproof recipes. -- adapted from jacket

A detailed account of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge providing background on its engineering history as well as the political and social climate of the late-nineteenth century.

"On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, "Once that first stack got going, it was 'Goodbye, Charlie." The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed...

One of the most admired nonfiction writers of our time retells the story of one truly fabulous year in the life of his native country; a fascinating and gripping narrative featuring such outsized American heroes as Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, and yes Herbert Hoover, and a gallery of criminals (Al Capone), eccentrics (Shipwreck Kelly), and close-mouthed politicians (Calvin Coolidge).

After her kind mentor is arrested because of his Jewish heritage, a young baker's apprentice in Normandy engages in discreet resistance activities, baking contraband loaves of bread for the hungry using surplus ingredients taken from occupying forces.

"Stephen Kohn presents a comprehensive, unified examination of the 35 federal laws that protect whistleblowers and their rights plus the common law protections available in each of the 50 states. For the first time in one easily accessed volume, readers will find the basic principles upon which all whistleblower law is premised. Kohn lays out the basic legal principles applicable to almost every whistleblower case, such as the scope of protected activity...

"In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust. In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers...

True Grit tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just fourteen when the coward Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 cash. Filled with an unwavering urge to avenge her father's blood, Mattie finds and, after some tenacious finagling, enlists one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, as her partner in pursuit, and they head off to Indian Territory after the killer....

"On the night Doña Tules Barceló opened her own gambling sala in Santa Fe, no one dared remind the fiery red-haired beauty that her mother had been a peon and that she herself had once worked for forty pennies a year. As she swept gracefully across the only wooden floor in town, she was proudly aware that it was her wits and beauty alone that had made her a rich, powerful woman. The story of this exciting historical figure is a vivid picture of...

"Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths." --