The manuscript had been sent down from Cambridge by Avis de Voto, who worked as a scout for the Knopfs. She was the wife of the historian and writer Bernard de Voto, who had had a lively transatlantic correspondence with Julia on the subject of knives as a result of a piece he had done in The Atlantic Monthly. Avis soon became involved when she heard that Julia was working on a cookbook in Paris with Mesdames Beck and Bertholle and offered to try to find an American publisher. Her first submission met rejection, the publisher's comment being, Why would any American want to know this much about French cooking?

Well, it so happened that I did. As I pored over this manuscript, I felt it was the answer to my prayers. I had lived in Paris for three and a half years—at just about the same time the Childs were there, although our paths never crossed—and most of what I learned then about cooking I absorbed from the butcher, the baker, the greengrocer, and the fishmonger. I would ask questions of them all, and then back in my tiny kitchen would try to remember what the butcher's wife had told me about making frites or the poissonière about sautéing a dorade. I never had the chance, alas, to go to the Cordon Bleu. When I returned to the States, I realized how totally inadequate the few books that dealt with French food really were. They were simply compendiums of shorthand recipes and there was no effort to instruct the home cook. Techniques were not explained, proper ingredients were not discussed, and there was no indication in a recipe of what to expect and how to rectify mistakes. So the home cook, particularly an American home cook, was flying blind.

Yet here were all the answers. I studied the recipe, for instance, for a beef stew and learned the right cuts of meat for braising, the correct fat to use (one that would not burn), the importance of drying the meat and browning it in batches, the secret of the herb bouquet, the value of sautéing the garnish of onions and mushroom separately. I ran home to make the recipe—and my first bite told me that I had finally produced an authentic French boeuf bourguignon—as good as one I could get in Paris. This, I was convinced, was a revolutionary cookbook, and if I was so smitten, certainly others would be.

The rest is history. In the fall of 1961 we published Mastering the Art of French Cooking (incidentally, Alfred Knopf, when I told him the title we had settled on, said if anyone would buy a book by that title, he would eat his hat) and after Craig Claiborne pronounced the book a classic, the book went into a second printing before Christmas. Of course, when Julia went on television the following summer as the French Chef all of America fell in love with her. But everything she taught on camera was grounded in this seminal book—understand what you are cooking, do it with care, use the right ingredients and the proper equipment, and, above all, enjoy yourself.

After the success of Mastering and the sudden awakening of the American palate to the pleasures of food, I realized that there should be similar books, putting the Julia principle to work on other cuisines that Americans were beginning to appreciate. One by one we introduced great teaching cookbooks: The Classic Italian Cook Book and More Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan, The Key to Chinese Cooking by Irene Kuo, A Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden, An Invitation to Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey, At Home with Japanese Cooking by Elizabeth Andoh, The Foods and Wines of Spain by Penelope Casas, and The Book of Latin American Food by Elizabeth Ortiz. In the seventies the vegetarian movement erupted and Anna Thomas was the first to come forth with a cookbook called The Vegetarian Epicure that made vegetarian food taste good, and it swept the country, particularly since she spoke the language of the counterculture (and they knew exactly what she meant by the munchies). The back-to-the-earth trend encouraged home bread baking but there was no good teaching book to turn to, so I persuaded James Beard to write Beard on Bread. (When he turned in his basic recipe, I asked a number of colleagues at Knopf to go home and try it, and they all brought in their first home-baked loaf so Beard could write a prescription of "Remedies for the Not-Quite-Perfect Slice.")

It was a yeasty time in this country. Everyone was cooking, trying out foreign cuisines and new trends, and it seemed time to look to our own roots to discover what made America the unique melting pot that it is. In the mid-seventies, the Fanny Farmer Candy Company was looking for a publisher that would give new life to the classic Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Fortunately I found Marion Cunningham, a wonderful teacher and living testament to the important values of home cooking, who took on the job of revamping the book from head to toe; she made it a classic for today's generation. The success of the new edition convinced me that we should explore further American food, but it was such a vast subject that it seemed better to tell the story in parts, exploring a region or a typically American theme. And thus the series of books we called Knopf Cooks American was born.

So what about today? Is there still new territory to be mined? Can one continue to find cookbooks that make a genuine contribution? I believe so because one continues to discover cooks who are great teachers, like Lidia Bastianich and Jacques Pépin. And cooking is a never-ending process of learning. Also, as Americans have grown more sophisticated about food, we want to know more about it. Every recipe has a story and there are rich culinary journeys to be explored. Claudia Roden recently wrote an extraordinary book, Arabesque, that traces the whole history of the Jewish people through food; we published Joan Nathan's The Foods of Israel Today, which tells the story of Israel through its eclectic cuisine; Hiroko Shimbo's The Sushi Experience demystified an increasingly popular cuisine for the home cook.

But Americans also have a love-hate relationship with food that should be addressed. Unfortunately, for the past two decades we have been deluged with information about what is bad for us, so books like Nina Simonds's A Spoonful of Ginger and Spices of Life, send out an enormously valuable message: concentrate on health-giving foods, understand how and why they are good for you and enjoy them. Rosie Daley, Oprah's cook for many years, broke all best-seller records with her little book In the Kitchen with Rosie (if Oprah could keep the pounds off and look so terrific on Rosie's fare, why couldn't the rest of America?). Rosie then teamed up with Dr. Andrew Weil to produce The Healthy Kitchen, which also emphasizes a positive approach.

Yet despite the proliferation of cookbooks on almost every subject today, fewer and fewer Americans are cooking at home. They complain that they don't really have time to cook, and going out for a bite or eating fast foods and take-out is so much simpler. But I am convinced they wouldn't feel that way if they were really drawn to the pleasures of cooking—the rewards of working with one's hands creatively, enjoying the tempting smells, using good fresh ingredients and knowing that you are in charge of what you eat. So I am constantly in search of the kind of seductive writing that will lure people back into the kitchen. Marion Cunningham's cookbook Lost Recipes, is just that—a treasure trove of forgotten recipes for easy family-style eating—and Edna Lewis's The Taste of Country Cooking, celebrates the legendary hospitality of the Southern table. For I believe that cooking is one of life's great pleasures, and I hope to keep feeding the fire.