10 delightful cookbooks for reading, cooking, and gifting

Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club Community Manager Ginger Horton put this nonfiction collection of cocktail party length stories on my radar. This feels like a series of the author chats that we do over in Book Club all the time. Ginger described this as the book form of that question: "Who would you invite to your imaginary dinner party?" That's almost what Alissa Wilkinson is answering in this collection and her guest list is exquisite. The subtitle's reference to "revolutionary women" includes names I expected to find, like Laurie Colwin, but also so many others—Edna Lewis, Hannah Arendt, Alice B. Toklas, Maya Angelou, and many more mentions besides as these women rub shoulders with all kinds of people in their places and times. I was especially not expecting to see Octavia Butler. If a small and short deep dive is possible, that's what she's doing in these pages. There's a recipe at the end of each chapter that's indicative of each woman's life and work. What she's talking about here is how she says these are women with strong opinions, but also generous hearts and who make strong arguments because they believe in them, but always do it with grace. I felt like I was in such good hands at her dinner table. I have to warn you slash encourage you that you could cobble together quite the reading list from the suggestions in these pages if you wanted to. It feels like the best kinds of literary conversations.