Deborah Krasner's book contains many good ideas relating to kitchen design, but it falls short on detail. Of the book's 151 pages, only 64 are instructional, in that they deal with the issues at hand and educate the reader. The next 64 are filled with photos and descriptions of real-world kitchens, some of which are useful, and others which appear to be included simply for show.

Of particular annoyance to me are the lack of floor plans for the photo kitchens, making it very difficult---in some cases impossible---to understand a kitchen's layout from the array of photos. We should care more for the sizes and layout of the kitchen, not the custom pottery being displayed and described. Many of the photos simply show pretty displays: this is decorating, not design!

What's worse, Krasner litters the instructional section with random floor plan sketches, none of which is labeled or cited in the text---they appear to be simple art pieces to fill space. Virtually all the drawings of appliances and kitchen layouts in this section are foolishly oversized, again in an apparent attempt to fill more space than needed to convey their information.

The typography is annoyingly oversized, using what appears to be 12- or 14-point type, with broad leading and word space. Were the type set in a smaller size---and the unnecessary graphics deleted--- the instructional section would probably shrink by 20%. Such a size reduction would more readily telegraph the text's lack of useful detail.

As for Krasner's Green suggestions, they are not overly preachy, though it is too easy to skip a grain of information among a paragraph of Green chaff. I would prefer that all the Green suggestions be grouped into a small section of their own. After all, a two-page outline can express all the mechanical design considerations for a Green kitchen. Three pages on composting are, quite frankly, 2.9 too many. As an example, the author spends about 150 words disparaging trash compactors and wasteful food packaging, and in so doing she never advises the reader about these appliances, their suggested locations, and their installation considerations.

For the most part, the book is not outdated, despite its 1994 publication date, though some of the photo kitchens are. The price guidelines Krasner quotes are almost certainly suspect, especially given the changing trends in kitchen materials and preferences.

Krasner also includes a seven-page supplier directory, stretched from about four pages of text by many unnecessary photos. To be fair to the author, the World Wide Web was virtually unborn in 1994; today, there is little need to list more than a collection of manufacturer addresses and URLs in a book.

I estimate that this 150-page book could be effectively reduced to perhaps 110 pages by reducing wasted space; it's ironic that Krasner's waste of paper in this book undermines her Green ideals.

The book has no index.

Except that I know how important and challenging kitchen design can be, I would be tempted to say, "relax and chill out." Even so, I'm not sure this book is worth all the anger. Planning a kitchen takes all kinds of insight, delivered at all levels of complexity. Some people are actually beginners or in other ways insecure; others passionate about being "green." They, too, deserve books that serve their needs. When my wife and I recently remodeled our kitchen, we used this book, among several others, to inform and inspire us. Taken collectively, they allowed us to achieve a kitchen that we think, after six months of use, is pretty much exactly what we wanted. Kitchen for Cooks more than held its own with these other volumes, filled in gaps in the others and left us grateful for buying it. We have no complaints. (Just don't get us started on the plumber.)

I was very confused trying to find a good kitchen book. They all seemed to be useful only if you had $100,000 to spend and want your kitchen to be in style for a year.

Somewhere I had read a wonderful review "Kitchens For Cooks" by Deborah Krasner. I purchase it and found it to be exceptionally helpful.

She takes you by the hand and forces you to think about-

Here are your choices of countertops, which one do you want...
Here are your choices of sinks...
Floors...
How do you deal with garbage?...
Ovens, rangetops, etc.

It provides you with a checklist of what you want. I had the kitchen cabinet maker put in pull out steps so visiting children could help too.

The choices can be overwhelming. This book allows you to make the decision before hand. Not in the showroom. Read this book with a pad of Post-Its nearby.

Regrettably, there's nothing I can really grasp onto, within this short novel, to boost it up to a three-star standing.

A never-was starlet named Janice Morel (aka Janice Morelski) is found stabbed to death in her room at the seedy Marne Hotel. Captain Sam Birge takes over on the scene, along with bitter, punchy Lieutenant Hagen. I'll admit that right from the start--with the snippety day-maid badmouthing the allegedly feckless night-maid--it's clear that there is some healthy tension percolating at the fog-shrouded Marne. The hotel manager is strangely disinterested in the dead body cluttering up one of her rooms-for-rent ("can't we just get this cleaned up?"), and is even caught in a lie...turns out her claim to actually owning the hotel is bogus, and it is really the property of gangster Joe Marco, operating out of The Club Trinidad. Scenes at the Club don't really add much to the book; no, if anything keeps this tale alive, it's the cast of moderately oddball roomers at the hotel: blind Freddie who is clearly not so blind, his weepy girlfriend Jean, and the deceased's casual lover, Harry Chapel, who flattens an officer of the law while sneaking out of the Marne, only to find love and deadly danger in a few chapters (odd part of the novel where everything is dropped in favour of Harry's whirlwind romance with a waitress he meets, who gets a nasty foreboding about ever seeing him again if he leaves; she's not half wrong). Plus there are the nervous maids, and a few desk-clerks who, along with the hotel manager, are clearly using the hotel for some sinister sideline orchestrated by slimey Joe Marco.

Does this have anything to do with the murder? Well, that would be telling--trouble is, I'm not sure it's worth investing in this forgotten noir novel to find out. The story proceeds in a sort of dull, linear fashion, with noble copper Birge dogging about, pressuring assorted nervous people into spilling the truth in their stuttering way. Sidekick Hagen just wants to get out the rubber hose. One thorough search turns out to reveal most of the hotel's grand secret. As for the whodunit aspect, the final revelation may be something you can spot coming after a few late developments.

This is decent, workmanlike mystery writing that I don't feel screams out to be rediscovered. To be fair, call it a two and a half star rating for Walk The Dark Streets.

Hitler has taken over Germany. Eva is faced to leave her family and move to America. Eva must leave alone because her father is very ill. The family knows Eva will be in great danger if she stays in Germany.
Walk The Dark Streets really made me realize how Jews were treated. Jews were not aloud to have two incomes per family. Jewish children were no longer aloud to go to school. Jewish children were not aloud to go to school. Jews were not aloud to go to stores if they needed something they would have to find some hole in the wall store.
Eva is a young girl that doesn't want to leave her family and loved one Arno. Eva has waited years for Arno to come back. When he finally does Hitler invades Germany. Eva has to be strong and face the fact that she may never see her family or Arno again .an example is where Arno says that he will never love anyone besides Eva and when he has a chance he will come and look for her in America.
Walk The Dark Streets is a book about family and relationships .I like how the author tells how the author tells how Eva and her family are felling. An example is when Eva is getting ready to leave and she tells her family that she won't leave without them. They tell her she needs to do it for the family, herself and life.I would recommend this to people.