Calling all cookbooks........

There's a really sweet woman, a detail rep from a drug firm, who calls on me at my office every couple of weeks. Very personable, and in a previous work life a professional chef. She comes in to talk drugs. Invariably, we segue into how the healthcare system here in the US is broken, and then we wind up talking food. She came by the other day to bring me something she'd whipped up at home - a savory walnut and gruyere torte, with a some creme fresh to garnish. Superb! This girl can cook!!

We were talking about cookbooks and both of us have collection, and our favorites are always the ones that have a stories or histories attached to them. I've just ordered 2 books I love to give her off of the net; "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook" (as much a history of her life with Gertrude Stein as it is a compilation of recipes, and Claudia Roden's "The History of Jewish Food: an Odyssey from New York to Samarkind". And I just might try to find a copy of Isabel Allende's "Aphrodite", her treatise on sex and food.

So my friends, I'm now curious; what's your favorite cookbook and why?