The author, Debbie Berne, died late last year after completing this book.

Though Debbie was indeed a fan, this term doesn’t properly capture the depth of her obsession with cookbooks. That obsession sprang not from a love of cooking (her husband, Dave, did all the cooking in their family), but from an absolute fascination with design, culture, history, and the ways they intersect in cookbooks. Her observations are smart, funny, and uniquely her own, and convey the sensitivity of someone who spent twenty-five years designing books.