As a collector of recipes for over 50 years, I obviously love cookbooks. I love them for the new dishes to try and I love them just to read. The Washington Post Cookbook is great for both.

This is a beautiful book with beautiful pictures. I would be nice to have a picture of every recipe, but then the book would be more expensive and there would be fewer recipes. Give and take, I guess, but I’m more likely to try something if I can see a picture of the completed product.

There is a great variety of recipes in ease of preparation, ethnicity, and ingredients. There are many recipes that I would never want to try but there are there are many that sound delicious and I look forward to preparing. I think everyone would find this to be true. Most of the ingredients can be found in a medium to large supermarket. There are recipes for beginners but most are for intermediate and skilled cooks.

One of the things I enjoyed about this book, other than the recipes, is the vignettes, the stories behind them. I liked the fact that these were culled from the most requested recipes in their archives. I find that recipes that are tried and proven by the everyday cooks generally are best, rather than recipes published only by a chef.

The short tip section at the end was also interesting.

The index is comprehensive, which is always helpful.

The Washington Post has done a good job in preparing this cookbook, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes to experiment with new recipes or just to read. ( )

This book may appeal more to fans of the newspaper than amateur cooks. Pictures are rare and it's fifty-fifty as to how appealing they are. The ingredients and directions are iffy at best, some okay for the homecook, many more appropriate for professional chefs. The best part is the bios that come with the recipes, telling the story behind each dish and when it appeared. ( )