I originally borrowed this cookbook from the library, but we used it so much, I just had to own it! Lots of great recipes that are low fat w/o sacrificing flavor. I have many cookbooks, but I keep coming back to this one for everyday meals! Highly recommed this cookbook--we love it!

The recipe's in this cookbook are easy to follow and taste great. They are geared up to cook at the firehouse, as most of the recipes are for either 4 or 8 people. Some up to 12. Great cookbook:-)

Most healthy cookbooks have recipes that are just too fussy for everyday cooking. This book has recipes that are not only easy to make, but are also delicious. Even my husband, who is usually very suspicious of anything labeled "healthy", loves the recipes from this book. I use this cookbook more than any other on my shelf.

Among my 20+ grilling cookbooks, this is the one to which I always turn when I want to put something good on the table with a minimum of fuss. Joe Bonanno shares with us his experience as a firehouse chef, and that of a number of other firefighters from around the country, in this remarkably good basic book. The recipes are straightforward, using ingredients that are readily available in most places. His chapters on grilling basics and safety tips are very helpful. The collection of marinade recipes is one of the best, and widest-ranging, to be found in the galaxy of grillbooks. The "Mexican Cerveza and Cilantro" marinade contributed by Richard Duden, an NYC Ladderman, is terrific; to get real flavor, be sure to use a lager (Bohemia and Dos Equis come to mind) as called for, not some thin swill like Corona. While one might assume that a firehouse cookbook would focus on beef and pork, the recipes for grilled veggies, fish, shellfish, lamb, chicken, and turkey are varied and uniformly excellent. There are a number of tasty salsa and salad recipes as well. The publisher has made this a particularly useable book by essentially eliminating the bad page turns that plague many otherwise good grill books (notably those of the Jamisons) and by including clear step-by-step instructions for taking the user from prep to palate. (Who really wants to deal with page turns when one's hands have marinade, sauce, or whatever on them?). Joe's Healthy Firehouse Cookbook is also highly recommended.

Mr. Bonanno provides an insider's view of organized crime - particularly the variety imported from Sicily - in the United States. It is a subject on which he is a unique authority as the longtime head of one of the country's major crime "families" and a Castellamarese Sicilian immigrant. He also enlightens readers somewhat with regard to what he perceives to be Sicilian traditions and the concept of "honor."

Of course, Mr. Bonanno does not illuminate much of his own involvement in illegal enterprises, which is certainly extensive. The reader is forced to assume that the criminal activities described in great detail are ones Mr. Bonanno oversaw himself. A great many recognizable names are mentioned, but the boss took care not to seriously offend anyone who was still alive and kicking at the time the book was published.

The book reaches back into the author's personal history from about the dawn of the 20th Century (some family history predates that) and the history of organized crime since the bootlegger wars of the Prohibition days. It advances into more modern times, though the recent information becomes sketchy.

As a first-hand account by a "don," this is a must-read for those deeply interested in the history of the American "Mafia." But it may disappoint more casual readers. And some may find objectionable the author's insistence that his criminal activity has been "honorable," his often sexist and racist views and his tendency to flatter himself (a tendency that was apparently passed on to his son, who also wrote a glowing autobiographical account of his work in the "family").

Of course, he doesn't tell about the times he had to order that someone be "whacked." But he does go deeper than any other "Mafia memoirs" such as _The Valachi Papers_ ever did.

Or did he? Towards the end, I began wondering if, in his effort to portray himself merely as a misunderstood Sicilian businessman, his book proved that Mario Puzo had done extensive research for _The Godfather_, of if Bonanno had simply used that saga to explain the Mafia's history.

Either way, it's very readable, and very entertaining.

Mr.Joseph T. Bonanno has written a great book about his world.A once honorable society.He had been a GodFather in.And about how it has now been truned into something other than it's supposed to be.In the last years the so-called men of honor have truned it into something diffrent.