I found myself relating so much to Fran's account of struggling with her weight. She is someone who loves the pleasures of life, and I'm right there with her. I just wish the first part of the book was longer, with more information about living the low carb life, and fewer recipes. She is such a good writer that she could write a whole book on lifestyle, and it would definitely keep my interest. I hope she writes more books filled with lo-carb information.

Fran's latest book has a place of honor in our kitchen - right next to her first! Both books help you eat low-carb but with "real food". There are even recipes to fulfill my chocolate cravings! Truly a "must-have" if you plan on eating this way long-term.

I really enjoyed reading and frequently refer to Fran McCullough's previous low-carb book, The Low-Carb Cookbook. This second book on the subject is already proving just as useful to me. The excellent information in it is completely accessible because the author's writing style is smooth, down-to-earth and as pleasant an experience as a chat with a good friend. Another major plus is that the layout of the book itself as a whole is extremely well organized. There is a clear table of contents, an extensive list of sources for low-carb living (many conveniently on the Web), a bibliography and an index. The first four of the book's six segments deal with living the low-carb lifestyle:(1) Why are we doing this anyway? (benefits of low-carb living); (2) Secret weapons (for maintaining the low-carb lifestyle); (3) Troubleshooting (blowing it, planned indulgences, snacks, eating out, holidays, on the road, hitting a plateau, thyroid troubles, etc.); (4) Special situations (vegetarianism, diabetes, pregnancy and nursing). The fifth section contains extensive information about what to have in your kitchen (spices, food labels, bread, soy, fake sugar). The final section is 240 pages of new recipes to add to the excellent ones in her first book.

I agree with the other reviewers that one of the most refreshing things about Fran McCullough is that she is not posing as a diet guru. She is an "ordinary" person in that she is not a doctor or nutritionist who came up with a particular diet and is hawking it as the salvation of all. She has tried the diet herself over a long period of time and found it has conferred many benefits to her health. And as a writer and cookbook editor, she has read carefully and analyzed the latest books and studies on the subject of low-carb living. She reports on her findings and conclusions about these books and studies clearly, concisely, and extremely helpfully. I found her section on thyroid especially useful. It was one of the best and most accurate statements of thyroid information I have read in the recent past (it is a subject I read about extensively when a very near relative of my age developed a serious thyroid problem).

I believe low-carbers, either new to this diet or old hands like me, will find this book well worth owning, a ready reference to which you will refer again and again. I have taken extensive notes from the book listing for myself suggestions she gave I found extremely pertinent to me for food, supplements and sources for both which I plan to follow up on in the very near future.

It may never rate as a "classic" cookbook, but over the last 5 years this slim tome has pulled me out of more than one last minute menu scrapes. Recipes like Arrosto di Maile all'Alloro (Pork with Bay Leaves) and Dried Apricots baked with Vanilla set the tone - non-labor intesive recipes with a short list of ingredients -- the emphasis being on the quality of meat, produce & spices rather than fancy techniques or sauces. Barbara Kafka's classic 500 degree roasted chicken and much maligned (but delicious) microwave risotto are by themselves worth the cost of this book!

I have over 120 cookbooks and this is the best!!!!! This is the one cookbook I keep coming back to. I have honestly tried almost every recipe in the book, and so far everything has been very, very good and very, very easy to make. My only sadness about this book is that it is now out of print and I have to buy a used copy to replace my first one which is falling apart at the seams.

Without a doubt, this book delivers. Easy, tasty food from the very best chefs. Try the Roasted Peppers, Potatoes and Onions or any of the Pork recipes.

A real favorite. In fact, I find myself going back to this over and over again, and am never disappointed.

The Journals of Sylvia Plath are an undisputible link to the base of her poetry. For a journal of a life, the entries are incredibly written and interesting. I have been very interested in her death by suicide which was the reason why I picked up these journals in the first place, but I found myself underlining sentences of her different viewpoints on life, ironically. If you you want to figure out about how Plath wrote her poetry and what events formed the woman who is such a mystery today, read this book. The only place where I thought that the diaries lacked was that all the information was not included. Some of her most passionate outrages and angry words have been taken out which I think are definitely a key to her poems that we do not possess. I am aware that the people in the journals must be protected but hope that the full works will be published in the future. The first half of the journals while Sylvia was in college have spoken to me and given me words and reasonings for my feelings that I had not been able to form myself before. I think any college student would benefit from reading her viewpoints and beautiful words. Anyone who is interested in the author will be impressed.

If you love Sylvia Plath's amazing poetry; if you have an affinity for either reading journals, or writing your own; or if you simply have an interest in the lifestyles and choices of women of some 50 years ago, these collected journals are a must.

Another reviewer wrote that this book was a big disappointment - that it stinks. How can one criticize someone's journals? I'm pretty sure Plath didn't expect these to be published one day - and so she didn't write them for the general public to read. These words are honest, riviting, disturbing, wonderful, priceless.

Very minimalist describes the approach to this collection of favorites. From Boston Baked Beans to Coq Au Vin, this has the recipes we all enjoy.

Receiving this one free is likely the only way I would have this in my collection. I have others that I turn to for more inspiration on American cooking, such as Sheila Lukens "USA Cooking" which is exceptional, or James Beard's "American Cooking."

This is not worthless or poorly done, it is just too bland for my tastes, such as a simple Meat Loaf with the ketschup smeared on the top. Many will gravitate to this food, so to each his own meatloaf.

Speaking as some one who has very few kitchen skills, I find McCullough and Witt's CLASSIC AMERICAN FOOD WITHOUT FUSS an indispensable work, for it offers more than one hundred receipes of foods I always liked but never actually knew how to make--and it offers them in concise, easy to follow, and surprisingly witty prose.

The sections include starters, soups, salads, main dishes, side dishes, breads, and desserts. In addition to such homey items as deviled eggs, chicken soup, pot roast, and macaroni and cheese, McCullough and Witt also include a surprising number of complex ethnic dishes such as moussaka and duck a l'orange, taking care to reduce their more complicated dishes to an essential level that even non-cooks will find unintimidating. The text is also sprinkled with side-bars on everything from roasting garlic to macaroons, and the various receipes invite experimentation.

Truly advanced cooks will no doubt find this particular cookbook basic, but for some one less interested in spending all day in the kitchen than in simply turning out an enjoyable upper-middle-class dinner for four it is a remarkably useful collection, easy to read and easy to use. It is also quite a bit of fun. Recommended.

If you're pondering again about what to fix for dinner look no further than this cookbook. It is complete unto itself. You no longer have to sift through the pages of over-built cookbooks that are so heavy one could use them for a doorstop. This is a mere 277 pages but it laden with delicious recipes. From carbonara to rice pudding. Everything I have fixed from this book is both pleasing to the eye as well as to the palate. You can quiet even the most finicky eater with this tome. Nicely laid out and easy to read and understand. The classic, that is to say, original recipe for coq a vin is included. Delicious!!! This book easily lays open on your counter or workspace. Don't be afraid to break the binding. It won't matter becase you will be using this book over and over again anyway. It covers the world. Pasta, fish, lamb, desserts, breads. If it is a comfort food brought over by many of the immigrants, it will most likely be here. Greek; mousaka. Italian; lasagne. French; steak au poivre. Jewish; potato pancakes. English; corn pudding. Too many crowd pleasers to name but absolutely one to have in your home.

Thank Heavens that there is a true gourmand trying to make low-carb dieting more appetizing. While pleased with the success of my low-carb dieting, I was challenged by the seemingly limited low-carb options. Recipes offered by Dr. Atkins were, to put it mildly, uninspiring. My own creativity seemed to apply only to pasta.

Enter Frances McCullough and The Low Carbohydrate Cookbook. Her creativity has enabled me to stay on the diet and not feel deprived. Try "A Lot Like Pizza", the eggplant pizza recipe and the basic meatloaf. They are all great. She even (gasp!) provides low-carb dieters with desert options other than jello! I've made the chocolate mousse and the ricotta puffs. Both were good, and MUCH better than jello! I've only found one recipe that was a total bomb: "Bowl of Red". It's supposed to be chilli. It tastes like dog food.

Still, I need to give credit where it is due. This book is a GREAT resource. I honestly don't know what I'd have done without it. Unlike some of the other readers who have reviewed this book, I haven't found her ingredients to be extravagently expensive, or hard to find. Also, most of the recipes go together pretty quickly. BRAVO, Fraces! And thanks!

After extremely disappointing results with recipes from Atkins and the Carb Addict people, in desperation I turned tothis cookbook. I was pleased to note that Ms. McCullough is an editor of several cookbooks, and my faith was justified. I have made several recipes (try the Red Hot chili -- it's great!) and all have been successful and tasty. I especially appreciate the long introductory section where she goes into detail about ingredients and pantry-stocking for the low-carb lifestyle, and the information on sweeteners was extremely interesting and useful. The other thing I like best about this cookbook is the extensive list of recipes for vegetables and side dishes -- I already know how to cook the meat, so adding variety with the limited number of low-carb veggies is important. I've recommended this book to several friends, with great results for them as well.

I bought both this book and the one by D. Chud. They are both nice books, but I found this book, ("The Low-Carb Cookbook" by F. McCullough) to be more practical - Fran gives you a rundown of low carb pantry items and resource guide for finding these items - lots of unusual low-carb products that would be otherwise hard to find (low carb Tortillas, for instance). Many recipes are short and easy to prepare - there are "classic" American (Fried chicken with lowcarb crispy coating),French (vicchyssoise,beef burgoyne), and Italian style (caponata,Italian meatloaf) recipes as well as recipes using some more commonly found Asian and Southwest (carnitas) ingredients. The book is organized in the usual manner: appetizers,soups,salads,main dishes,condiments, veggies,side dishes, desserts and each section has good and interesting low-carb recipes. Each recipe has the carb,protein and fat counts, so you can get an idea of how the carbs would change if you make substitutions. In addition, she has some more unusual basic recipes (how to prepare your own pork rinds / cracklings)that I haven't seen before. My favorite parts are special sections spread throughout the book with topics like how to prepare a low-carb Turkey stuffing, how to make a low-carb "breadings" for meat,and low-carb wrappers of lettuce to mention a few. I really enjoy this book and have shared it with co-workers on the low-carb diet. One last comment is that another book for low carb eaters which is complementary in nature to the "The Low-Carb Cookbook" is "The Complete Meat Cookbook" by Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly. In that book you get a lot of buying info on meat (difference between prime and choice, how to choose a ham,beef,pork,lamb and veal)as well as how to prepare meat easily and with good flavor and tenderness, while on a budget. The accompanying side dish recipes in this book are probably not low carb (you have to watch the ingredients, some are low carb), but the meat preparations are easy and delicious, a good complementary book to "The Low Carb Cookbook".

_The Low-Carb Cookbook_ and _Living Low Carb_ are two of the most consulted works on my cookbook shelf, but _The Good Fat Cookbook_ is comparatively thin in content, and conspicuously packed with plugs for specialty health food supplements. (Yes, you could pay $70 a gallon for "virgin" coconut oil - or maybe pick it up from a warehouse club, Asian market or restaurant supply house?) The book also strays considerably from Low Carb dietary principles - which may cause some confusion for some LC'ers who have come to equate the author's nutritional works with a Low Carb philosophy. From a strictly subjective viewpoint, it's disheartening to see the author "move on" or tweak her nutritional philosophy in this direction - hight carb plus high fat reads an awful lot like "have your cake and eat it, too." Gone or nearly gone from the author's latest here is beef, pork, and an elegant array of menus with an emphasis on a variety of popular flavors - "in" are canned, salted and smoked fishes galore (despite the mercury-in-fish issue, Omega-3 rich seafood dominates the non-vegan entrees), breakfasts that would use up a month of atkins allowances and, I'd argue, a fair number of dishes that just seem like quirky, minimalist experiments in fusion cusine. Watermelon sandwitches with goat cheese? Brocolli in Peanut Butter (sans Asian spices, even)?

Also, the Usenet acronym "post proof or retract" (PPOR) was my gut response to some of the authors' health claims, especially those about irradiation. McCullough claims that since embarking on a massive national food irradiation program, that 10% of its population (yes, 10%!) now dies of liver cancer. These kind of claims demand painstaking citation, especially in the context of a book that prominently advocates a plethora of commercial health food products. (I'm just as skeptical of big health food/Peta/vegan/whatever claims as big agricorp claims, and you should be, too!)

The ever shortening half-life of dietary fads and taboos make for strange bedfellows - pp 155-156 warns ominously of the potential ill effects of most soy products, and yet this book is forwraded by the same Dr. Barry Sears who made a big hit with his book _The Soy Zone_ not two years ago.

In short this book veers into faddishness and product touting to a degree that just wasn't the case with the author's previous works, which I believe *remain* some of the very best nutrition-minded cookbooks out there, for those who have "failed on low fat".

For years I have been trying to learn about nutrition. I've always thought that there was more to it than just eating "low-fat." A nutritionist at my college's health center simply handed me a copy of the old food pyramid. I was frusterated that I'd never learn the real details for myself. But I finally FOUND IT! THANK YOU Fran McCullough for knowing that not all of us are just mindless cattle!! Thank you for realizing that some of us are interested in more than just being told to "eat your veggies" or given a bunch of low-fat recipes! After reading this book, I feel EMPOWERED to make healthy food decisions for myself, with or without a recipe! I UNDERSTAND now what I should be putting into my body, specifically. There aren't a LOT of recipes in this book, but there are just enough to get me started. Now I have the knowledge to create my own recipes as well as the ability to decide whether the recipes in other cookbooks are really good for me or not!! There are a lot of diet cookbooks out there that have recipes that aren't really good for you, but just prey on people who want to lose weight and just want to be told what to do. Now I won't be duped ever again. This book is a MUST for every human being on earth. It's not just about being thin...it's about being HEALTHY!

As much diet discussion guide as cookbook, McCullough's ("The Low-Carb Cookbook") newest presents the latest scientific thinking on fats - processed hydrogenated, versus natural animal and vegetable, saturated and unsaturated, trans fats and butter and lard and vegetable oils. And not only does she make it comprehensible, she's even witty. She talks about why Americans are fatter than ever, why it's good for us to eat things we like (as long as they're not "reduced-fat anything," frozen dinners and processed foods). There's advice on supplements, discussions of pollution contaminants, like mercury in fish, reviews of ingredients from canned fish to dairy products and oils from avocado to safflower.

Recipes - the second part of the book - offer 100 dishes, breakfast through dessert, from Coconut Waffles to Moroccan Red Pepper Soup, Smoked Trout Salad with Grapefruit and Avocado, Smoothies, Tuna Burgers and Buffalo Chili. A clear, concise, accessible and in-depth introduction to low-carb, good-fat nutrition thinking.

If you really want to further your collection of annoyingly yuppie recipies, this is the book. Just more ideas for arugula, goat cheese and putting grapes and walnuts or balsamic vinegar in and on just about everything. I sent it back.