I had some mixed feelings about the book. First, the positive. The photography in the book is excellent. The recipes overall do look pretty good an appetizing, and Jamie's short essay segments are pretty good to read. The negative? This is not a book for those who need to or want to follow a healthy diet. I think that it is a bit of a sharp contrast to Jamie's more recent healthy eating campaign (just look up his TED talk to get an idea what I mean). But ok, I can do go along with that. What I really did not like is that a lot of the recipes call for ingredients that you are not likely to find unless you shop at Whole Foods on a regular basis (and that assumes you even have a Whole Foods in town, which we do not where I live now). So, that seemed to make the book a bit less accessible to me in terms of recipes I may have wanted to try making. Having said the above, Jamie does give a pretty good look at American cuisine overall, showing it as the diverse canvas that it is from big cities like New York to the bayous of Louisiana to the Arizona desert. And what he is doing is giving those traditional cooking ways his own touch as well. I think this is a book people will enjoy, maybe make a recipe now and then as a treat, but it seems more enjoyable as a coffee table kind of book, i.e. very nice to look at.
