The Passionate Vegetarian is one of the all-time best cookbooks I have come across in 30 years of vegetarian cooking. Its sheer length alone (1110 pages) promises hundreds of recipes from which to choose, but as you thumb through the pages, reading and ultimately preparing individual recipes, you see the creativity, knowledge and attention to detail that the author, Crescent Dragonwagon, has put into each page.

In addition to the recipes, when appropriate, she includes descriptive sections, usually no longer than a page, for items the reader may not be familiar with or just be interested in reading more about, such as umeboshi, polenta or celery root. Occasionally, a very helpful "suggested menu" will appear in the side margin next to a particular recipe. The book is very well indexed and each recipe is introduced with a little bit of history and anecdotal background to bring it alive. The best thing about this cookbook however is the recipes. This book has a fantastic array of choices that are incredibly inventive. So often I will page through a cookbook, see one or two interesting recipes, but be for the most part unimpressed. I love the variety and imaginative nature of the dishes in this book and would highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates good food, vegetarian and meat eater alike.

Vegetarian diets are becoming more popular as nutritional concerns arise and environmental awareness increases, and vegetarian cookbooks are a perfect gift for anyone who has a new domicile or simply loves to eat. In fact, Crescent Dragonwagon has crafted a cookbook so generous and intriguing that I think it would inspire anyone to roll up their sleeves and create a meal. Vegetarian meals are not for vegetarians only anymore!

Dragonwagon takes into account the time and budgetary constraints under which the typical reader may be living and gives wonderful suggestions about how making a little extra of one recipe will be such a time-saver when creating a new dish later in the week. She gives all kinds of anecdotal information about the recipes. I am reading the book cover-to-cover, honestly, because it's so interesting and fun. It conveniently stays flat while you're cooking from it, too-- amazing that all cookbook publishers haven't caught on to this trick yet.

This is the most accessible cookbook I have ever read, and at over 1100 pages and 1000+ recipes, the cover price is an incredible bargain. I predict that The Passionate Vegetarian will become the cooking tome passed from generation to generation and will have a venerated place in kitchens all over the world.

With this exuberant, deeply felt, beautifully written work, I think Crescent Dragonwagon has reinvented the cookbook! While PASSIONATE VEGETARIAN is filled with recipes that will make you want to get into the kitchen immediately, it's also personal, funny, joyful, sad, full of dimension and color --- a vivid slice of life itself, as told through and in food. You feel the author as a friendly, reassuring kitchen presence: knowledgeable but gentle, careful to explain but taking time to laugh with you, swap stories, and enjoy every step of the way. Delicious (the artichoke-lima bean stew with lemon and garlic is on my must-make list; I've already tried her divine tempeh-broccoli-mushroom stroganoff, quick but irresistible Garlic Spaghetti, and fabulous "Killed Lettuce Salad," with hot sauteed mushrooms), it's also diverse (curries, chillies, lasagnas, Asian dishes, great appetizers and desserts), and definitive (info on every grain, every vegetable, every bean as well as an amazing trove of well-researched culinary information). Astonishing! It would be worth purchasing at almost any price, but at a 1000-plus pages (they say 800-something pages here, but it's longer)...[and this price](much less at amazon) it is a bargain... as well as the book everyone, vegetarian and otherwise, is getting from me for Christmas! For just as it reinvents the cookbook, making it literature as much as how-to (though excellent how-to it certainly is, in every recipe's clearly detailed instructions) it also rethinks vegetarianism, making it take its rightful place as a distinct and global cuisine, not just healthful or an "ism". Vibrantly flavored, this book has every color of the palette and palate. It is indeed passionate: also playful,intimate, full of life, and something anyone who appreciates good food would love. A joy to cook from, eat from, and read, its food and words will nourish the body, mind, heart and soul.

This book is as fun to read as it is to cook from. Dragonwagon has a nice colloquial writing style and gives a lot of background on where each recipe comes from, trivia about the Ozarks and the inn she ran with her husband for many years.

Although this book does have a few pages focusing on breads and salads, the soup recipes (which make up about 75% of the book) are truly the shining stars here. The recipes are divided into chapters on chicken soups, fish soups, vegetable soups, bean soups, dairy soups, nut soups, and fruit/dessert soups. There is also a chapter devoted entirely to making the ultimate gumbo, and one on a very versatile "diet" soup. The majority of recipes fall into the vegetable/dairy/and bean soup categories - making this book quite suitable for vegetarians or people interested in cutting back on the amount of meat in their diets. She doesn't eat red meat, and you won't find any recipes that call for beef, pork, or lamb... although there are a couple of exceptions.

As other reviewers have mentioned, these recipes are all easily adaptable to what vegetables you already have in your refrigerator, though you will probably need to make regular trips to the store to stock up on fresh veggies if you intend to use this book often. The recipes call for lots of ingredients, but you can easily leave some out and still have a great tasting finished product. Many variations are given for each soup and some have ideas for using leftovers. Although she doesn't recommend it, bouillon cubes or canned stock could easily be substituted if you're short on time. However, if you ever wanted to learn how to make a great homemade stock, this is the place for it.

The recipes themselves are excellent and I have had fabulous results and many compliments when serving these soups to others. I highly recommend the Mexican-Style The Soup, Greek Navy Bean Soup, and Pea Soup Caraway Adelle. These soups are a wonderful way to save money and eat healthy while still pleasing your tastebuds.

The book has a nice design, but if you're looking for fancy photographs or art, you won't find them here.

This book not only contains wonderful, usuable recipes, but it also tries to show you how to cook. It gives you the frame for any recipe, and then with what you have on hand you can feel confident to vary, vary, vary to your heart's content. This is the basis of good cooking, not whether or not you can follow a complicated "conde nast" recipe. In rural Japan it is very difficult to get so many ingrediants people take for granted (fresh dill? out of the question) so this flexibility is very important.

Soup. Bread. Muffins. Salad. Yum. This is a book full of great recipes and wonderful lore. I enjoy the quotes and anecdotes almost as much as the food, and this is great food. We enjoy the Hillbilly Many-Bean Soup, the Skillet-Sizzled Buttermilk Cornbread, the Glazed Orange Muffins, the Dairy Hollow House Pasta Salad, the Chicken & Cheese Soup with Green Chiles again and again. Some of these recipes even go with us on vacation. There are great directions for making your own soup stocks, and no, you do not have to live in your kitchen all day to do it. We keep finding interesting recipes we want to try, as well as returning to our favorites time & time again. More than a recipe book, this is a visit with a friend who loves to cook. Enjoy!

I first came across the story when my drama group performed a rather shambolic adaptation of the book. After we toured Hungary with it I finally managed to find an English copy and fell in love with it. The actual dialogue is a bit ropey in places but I think that can be blamed on the translation. The reflection of the events is probably heavily romanticized but it dosn't matter for Gardonyi creates a really inspiring tale of bravery, heroism and sacrifice.

I loved this book! Someone should seriously make a movie based on this book. It is the Hungarian version of The Alamo, except better! There aren't many other books that flow with the hungarian spirit like Gardonyi's "Egri Csilagok" Eclipse of the Cresent Moon.

I first read this book in Hungary as a child and it made a lasting impression on me then... Reading it as an adult was even better. It is an interesting and entertaining account of 1500's Hungary and worth reading for anyone who is interested in history or has a Hungarian background.

This book is definately one of my favorite, and I know I will never forget it. Jenny Nimmo makes you get drawn into the book, and you feel like you are living it. it is a great adventure, has mystery, magic, and people you can relate to. you get so caught up in the book, you can't wait to see what will happen next. This is definataly one of the best books in the world, as far as I am concerned.

The author again combines fantasy elements with the growth of her imagination to weave solid entertainment. This book has many wonderful elements of magic and mystery, and unusual plotting and events. A very great story. Anyone could enjoy this incredible book by Jenni Nimmo.

I REALLY LOVED THIS BOOK !!! I OFTEN FEEL LIKE NIA LIKE I ''CAN'T DO NOTHING'' BUT THIS BOOK SHOWS YOU THERE'S MAGIC IN EVERYONE. NO ONE MORE THAN GWYNN.(YOU'LL FIND OUT WHAT I MEAN IF YOU READ THIS BOOK)

A delightful and rollicking ABC, this picture-book will be appreciated by anyone who loves good food, celebration, Thanksgiving --- and maybe most of all, anyone who does all these things and is ALSO a vegetarian. Not that there's a vegetarian agenda --- the book is not at all evangelical --- but it happens that at this Thanksgiving feast, Turkey is a guest, not an entree, Trucking in Turnips (just as Bear Brought Banana Bread, Biscuits & Butter and Cat Carried Cherry Compote and Cranberry Cobbler). We read ALLIGATOR aloud before every Thanksgiving at our home, and it makes all of us, of all ages, giggle, cheer, and happily dig in. A true celebration of a book, and delicious.

As a kindergarten teacher I am always on the lookout for alphabet books that portray letters and sounds in a different way than I read just the day before, while keeping to the same concepts. We really enjoyed the illustrations here. Several of my students noticed that this illustrator drew the ducks in the book we used on our first day of school because the pictures are simple, clear, and not too ornate. We enjoyed this work, and heartily recommend you stop by to have lunch or dinner with these folks while learning the a, b, c's.

Weather or not, life in a city goes on. And not only life, but lives: this delightful, joyful book follows six very different neighbors in an apartment building, plus a father and son, and several other folks in the neighborhood (a waiter, a baker, a businesswoman)as they go through the pleasures and irritations of a prolonged period of rain, and then (turn the book over) sun. Funny and charming, the book is illustrated perfectly. Wonderfully colorful pictures and unusal perspectives capture perfectly the magical, changing pulses and moods of an active city's residents. The book, though, is not only about weather in a city --- it's about human nature, too. Teachers, as well as parents, will love this book both on its on account and for the questions it can elicit: how do different kinds of weather affect the way you feel? What do you like to do when it rains or when it's sunny? How hot is too hot? What would your "weather wish" be? What do different kinds of weather mean in the city as opposed to the country? And, P.S. : it is gently multi-cultural; the skin colors, family names, religions etc, are as full-spectrum as real life.

This book is really fun and unusual to read especially because half way through the book, it has to be turned upside down to finish reading it! The illustrations are beautiful, vibrant and full of life. The story is poetic and funny at the same time. Highly recommended!

Ansen Dibell actually wrote five books in the Rule of One series and I'm one of the fortunates to have read them all. You see, for some strange reason, her final two books were never published in the US, but because her books were such a hit over here in the Netherlands, they were inmediatly translated and published over here, where they did well and established quite a following. American publishers, take note! You've been missing out on the deal of the century! Ansen Dibell is one of the best, if not THE best, writers I've ever had the pleasure to come across. I've adored her books for fifteen years and they never cease to entertain and enrapture me. Publish this woman's books!

A marvelous work. More conventional, less eliptical and thus less mysterious than the first volume in this intriguing series (Pursuit of the Screamer--terrible title for a great novel). Far better than the authors to whom he is compared, it is a shame Dibell stopped with three books.

I liked this book, but wish the main character, Andrea, was more believable. If she really was a college graduate in America, no way would she have tolerated day one in Iran the way it is described in the book. Supposedly Andrea had never been overseas, so that makes her incredible tolerance (of her mother-in-law, her husbands extreme and instant behavior change, life in general) unreal. From the time she gets off of the plane, Mani, her husband deserts her. Yet he is described as the perfect loving father and husband when he is in America. Any woman would have been suspect at least. Yet Andrea doesn't question for a long time, and I found myself wishing she had some spunk. The daughter Kelly doesn't figure much either. Her purpose as a character is left dangling. Then there are dangerous political undertones smacking Andrea in the face, yet she wants to learn the language and socialize. When she finally catches on,(and by this point I was thinking she must be a real idiot), it is way too late in the story, for her, for her daughter, and for the reader. She doesn't even find out until the very end that her marriage isn't recognized there. She could have left all along! Something about the story does flow though, and I kept reading and found the cultural and political descriptions fascinating and well written. Andrea's ultimate survival is too bizarre, and her perseverance at this point is not to be admired, but to be questioned mentally. A good story, all in all, but difficult to relate to. I live in the Middle East, so it isn't being an American and naive that causes my discomfort with the plot. I think it is just a fairly weak plot, but I'll admit that the author does a good job with trying to make it work.

INCREADIBLE STORY, THIS BOOK IS A GREAT READ, I HAVE A LITTLE TIME AT THE END OF A VERY BUSY DAY FOR READING. BUT WHEN I STARTED READING THIS BOOK I MADE SURE TO HAVE TIME FOR IT. CONGRATULATION & MY BEST WIHES TO MRS. BALSAM. WOULD LIKE TO HAVE MORE OF HER STORIES IN THE FUTURE.

This book was a great read. The author tells a human story from a mother's perspective. The book is fast paced and is subfused with a subtle sense of underlying panic. A mother faces an islamic culture and a cruel husband both indifferent to her, and her handicapped child's needs. What saves her is not her Western ideology but her fearless determination to do what is right.

I loved this book. I was not sure if I would or not at the end of the first chapter. By the end of the second chapter, I was hooked. This book had everything-interesting characters that were fairly well developed (some could have been a little better developed background wise), great cooking sequences (a recipe appendix would have made this even better), an interesting myth that ran throughout and climaxed with a big surprise, good descriptions of what some Arab Americans are feeling and how some are acting-even this is diversified to some extent. The author explores the spirituality of the Islamic faith to some extent especially the personal interpretations some have. Thoughts of the characters on the specific events of 9/11 were missing, but one could pretty well get a reading to this from the characters' other comments. I must confess that I do not usually like romance in novels, but the romances in this book (the main character and her lover as well as her Uncle and her friend) were just perfectly poignant. Some slight fault in the ending for some, others will love the ending. I would highly recommend this book. It will give you some things to think about long after the last page is read and may suggest further readings. Isn't that what reading should do?

The scents, scenes and stories from this book will follow me for the rest of my life. I felt somehow changed inside when I finished the last page---enlightened and educated about Middle Eastern people and in awe of their myths, food and lives. I came away changed, enchanted and wanting to visit the Baghdad of Han and Sirine's story. Ms. Abu-Jaber has woven a beautiful, intricate, sweet-scented tale of love, food, families and life. The descriptions of the food made such an impression on me that I went and found some of the recipes from the story to make for myself so I could experience the flavors and make them my own. I highly recommend this book...I wish that all Americans could read this to better understand the culture of the Middle East.

Diana Abu-Jaber's lush tale of cooking, love, longing, and exile set against the US's ongoing conflict with Iraq stirs the soul and totally fills the senses.

Crescent is a love story between an L.A.-born and -bred, green-eyed, half-Arab blonde chef and an exiled Iraqi intellectual with a mysterious past. Interwoven into the Sirine and Han's love story is the fable of Abdelrahman Salahadin, told by Sirine's uncle, the gently devoted man who raises her after her parents are killed overseas when Sirine is nine years old. Both Abdelrahman's destiny and Sirine and Han's love unfold amid lush surroundings, complete with the heady aromas of Middle Eastern food and the fragrance of the mejnoona tree, which blooms behind the busy café where Sirine works.

Anyone who appreciates either good food or a good love story will find Crescent an absolute delight. Crescent is beautiful and sensual and languid all at the same time, like a perfect Spring day in Oregon.

Very little is known about the huge landmass that forms Central Asia and the Caucasian highlands with the Caspian Sea, the world's biggest inland body of water, in the middle.
This book tries to fill the gap by providing an exhaustive, and yet highly enjoyable, account of the history, geography and culture of the many different nations that inhabit the area.
The book was published a year before the fall of the Soviet Empire and clearly predicts the end of Communsim and the USSR.
But the chief interest of the book is the fact that it brings so many peoples out of obscurity.
In recent years such places as Chechnya have gained notoriety. We also know about the overspill of terrorism from Afghanistan into neighboring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. But little material is available on the background of these conflicts. This scholarly book is, to my knoweldge, the most authoritative source available in English.
I receommend it to students and scholars as well as the intersted general reader. A READER

As this review is being written, the attack by Chechen guerrillas against a theatre in Moscow is still going on.
The outside world is trying to understand why so many desperate men and women decided to risk their own lives by seizing hundreds of innocent people hostage in a Moscow theatre?
The answer comes in this book to which I return whenever there is something dramatic between the Russians and the Muslim peoples who live amongst them or are teir neighbours.
I wish Vladimir Putin had read this book before vowing to crush the Chechens who have been at war against Russia, and for their own independence, since trhe 18th century.
Believe me it is not enough to say "terrorism and repression" to understand.
A READER IN PARIS FRANCE

The liberation of Afghanistan from the Taleban last year has attracted international attention to a vast area the size of the United States and known as Central Asia.
It was there that the colonial empires of the 19th century played what is known as The Great Game.
The term Central Asia is misleading because the lands concerned resemble a secluded area rather than one that is at the centre of things.
The region may achieve centrality because of its oil and natural gas resources, and the rivarly it is generating among America, the European Union, Russia, China, India, Iran, and Pakistan.
This book by an Iranian author and journalist tells the story of Islam in the entire Soviet Union of which Central Asia was part until 1991.
Much research has gone into this volumnious study, one might even say too much research, and the torrent of details may prove tiresome to some readers.
But the prose is fast paced and journalistic in the best sense of the term, thus compensating for the heaviness of the facts, names, dates and figures.
The book appeared more than a year before the collapse of the USSR but clearly predicts that event.
One would have preferred more detailed maps with this volume.
The author should do a sequel to bring us up to date about developments in the region in the past decade or so.
A READER