Spiral bound recipe book is a first printing with a single hourglass, the oversized cuisine study is also a first print. Tight, clean, flat, square, crisp and sharp books with light edge wear, small scuffs on the boards. Switzerland, The Low Countries, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, North Africa In the mid 20th century, Time Life Books gathered together some of the West's best-known food writers to collaborate on an unprecedented library of books that would be published under the title Foods of the World. With large, full-color hardbound volumes on everything from Eastern Europe to the Middle East to the American South, this remarkable series is credited to this day with being central to America's awakening to the adventurous appeal of global cuisines. In notable opposition to the packaged and processed zero-value foods that were being marketed so vigorously to Americans, Foods of the World offered a call to action to investigate the folk foods of nations and regions where from-scratch cooking had persisted with pride for centuries or millennia. Each volume of Food of the World is really two gifts in one. Accompanying each volume is a separate spiral-bound Recipe Booklet that contains all of the book's recipes plus more. It is designed to be a working companion piece in the kitchen.