The Great Country Inns of America Cookbook: More Than 400 Recipes from Morning Meals to Midnight Snacks, Fourth Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)The high point of this book is absolutely the flavor. The tomato pie is a sheer delight, although it was rather messy to serve when fresh (it had a tendency to fall apart). The peach cobbler certainly highlighted the best of that summer fruit. The zucchini breakfast meal is surprisingly flavorful given the short list of simple ingredients. All in all, flavor and appearance are the shining best aspects of Great Country Inns. You'll be proud to serve these recipes to your own guests, and there's no need to tell them how simple most of these recipes are---let them think you slaved over a hot stove!
Normally a lack of photos doesn't bother me, although it's a tad unusual in a book that's all about food oriented towards guests, special occasions, and so on; I don't think they're needed here in most cases because the recipes are pretty simple, but some readers might prefer them.
I did find some of the directions a bit ambiguous. For example, there's a casserole that involves "blending" a mixture of eggs and dairy with chopped & cooked potato, then baking. There's no indication whether blending means stirring or actual blending with a mixer, which would result in a very different texture and result. We decided to go with stirring and the result came out well, so I'll assume that's what the recipe meant. These ambiguities seem relatively few, however, so I wouldn't worry too much about them.
My only other negative is, like the photos, very reader- and occasion-dependent. Like most restaurant food, these recipes tend to use huge amounts of butter to improve flavor. The peach cobbler leftovers had a puddle of congealed butter in them after refrigeration---the recipe used so much that some of it separated back out again. This isn't a problem if you aren't concerned about healthy eating or bring out this cookbook only on special occasions, but I thought it deserved a mention in case it's a concern for you.
Overall this is a wonderful cookbook, well worth exploring in your kitchen. The vast range of recipes is impressive and delicious, and surprisingly easy to make.

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A combination cookbook and food-lover's guide to the finest inns in the country.America's most celebrated country inns are known for their great cooking, and the recipes in this culinary guidebook represent the finest of these mouth-watering dishes. This newly revised fourth edition features more than 400 recipes that are as easy to make as they are delicious. Organized from appetizers to desserts for easy reference, each recipe includes a brief description of the inn where it is served. A state-by-state index will help traveling foodies follow their taste buds to exquisite meals around the country. 2-color throughout, 100 black & white line drawings, indexes.

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Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture Review

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(More customer reviews)Annabel Wharton has written a stunning and brilliant book about the US, Europe and the Middle East during the 1950s and 1960s, the height of the Cold War. She tells the story of how Conrad Hilton and his hotel empire participated in the rebuilding of Western Europe and key spots in the Middle East in the wake of WWII by establishing the Hilton International hotels--architectural monuments to modernism--as "little Americas" away from home for US businessmen, tourists, and diplomats. She explores Hilton hotels in London, Berlin, Istanbul. Rome, Cairo , Athens and other locales. Wharton is a smart, witty writer, and this book is a great pleasure to read.

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In postwar Europe and the Middle East, Hilton hotels were quite literally "little Americas." For American businessmen and tourists, a Hilton Hotel—with the comfortable familiarity of an English-speaking staff, a restaurant that served cheeseburgers and milkshakes, trans-Atlantic telephone lines, and, most important, air-conditioned modernity—offered a respite from the disturbingly alien. For impoverished local populations, these same features lent the Hilton a utopian aura. The Hilton was a space of luxury and desire, a space that realized, permanently and prominently, the new and powerful presence of the United States.Building the Cold War examines the architectural means by which the Hilton was written into the urban topographies of the major cities of Europe and the Middle East as an effective representation of the United States. Between 1953 and 1966, Hilton International built sixteen luxury hotels abroad. Often the Hilton was the first significant modern structure in the host city, as well as its finest hotel. The Hiltons introduced a striking visual contrast to the traditional architectural forms of such cities as Istanbul, Cairo, Athens, and Jerusalem, where the impact of its new architecture was amplified by the hotel's unprecedented siting and scale. Even in cities familiar with the Modern, the new Hilton often dominated the urban landscape with its height, changing the look of the city. The London Hilton on Park Lane, for example, was the first structure in London that was higher than St. Paul's cathedral.In his autobiography, Conrad N. Hilton claimed that these hotels were constructed for profit and for political impact: "an integral part of my dream was to show the countries most exposed to Communism the other side of the coin—the fruits of the free world." Exploring everything the carefully drafted contracts for the buildings to the remarkable visual and social impact on their host cities, Wharton offers a theoretically sophisticated critique of one of the Cold War's first international businesses and demonstrates that the Hilton's role in the struggle against Communism was, as Conrad Hilton declared, significant, though in ways that he could not have imagined.Many of these postwar Hiltons still flourish. Those who stay in them will learn a great deal about their experience from this new assessment of hotel space.

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