Brown (Cora, Rose and Bob).

America Cooks. Practical Recipes from 48 States.

New York: Norton & Co., 1940.

Thick octavo, 986 pages. First edition. The greatest, and scarcest, of the Browns may cookbooks. The Browns - avant-garde poet and little magazine editor Bob, with his sister and mother, Rose and Cora, published twelve cookbooks in just six short years. Many of them are wonderful books, but America Cooks was their masterpiece. It was an era where American regional cooking was starting to be recognized and valued in the culinary cities. Sheila Hibben and Ruth Berolzheimer produced other great regional books, but this one stands out for its thoroughness and literary quality. The tone is breezy and surprisingly modern compared with the many dry-as-bones science-oriented books of the era. A few pages show signs of being dog eared, previous owner's bookplate with name excised, otherwise very good, in publisher's red cloth. In a quite worn and a bit faded dust jacket, but it's complete, and that is unusual. Scarce in any dust jacket.