Smithsonian's picks for the best books about food of 2024 include McAtlas, A Call to Farms, Slow Noodles and more. Illustration by Emily LankiewiczOne of the easiest and most fun ways to learn about a place is through its food. And when you arent able to actually travel to a destination, the next best thing is to read about its cuisine, and perhaps to cook it yourself.Good food books make cultural dishes and history jump off the page, and our favorites of this year manage to do just that. These ten titles are bursting with tasty food, from rugelach to pho, as well as amusing and captivating storytelling on everything from the history of refrigeration to Julia Childs kitchen, transporting readers from Cambodia to Bethlehem to McDonalds franchise locations around the globe.McAtlas: A Global Guide to the Golden Arches by Gary HeWhen James Beard Award-winning photographer Gary He found himself eating an iftar meal at a McDonalds in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2018, an idea was born. He spent the next several years traveling to 50 countries on six continents to visit architecturally distinctive McDonalds locationsfrom a ski-thru lodge-style restaurant in Lindvallen, Sweden, and one inside an old DC-3 airplane in Taupo, New Zealandand sample special menu items. According to He, localized menu items, like the McBaguette in France and shawarma-style Chicken McArabia in Saudia Arabia, account for about 30 percent of McDonalds systemwide sales. McAtlas, which is not endorsed by McDonalds (the fast-food chain had no involvement or input), is a volume filled with hundreds of non-stylized photos showcasing these unique outposts and offerings of the Golden Arches. Perhaps this isnt news to you, but Hong Kong locations serve macaroni soup, a pasta topped with ham in a bowl of beef or chicken broth traditionally found at local cafes known as cha chaan teng. McAtlas: A Global Guide to the Golden Arches From James Beard Award-winning photographer and writer Gary He, McAtlas is a visual social anthropology of the largest and most popular restaurant in the world.Julia Childs Kitchen: The Design, Tools, Stories and Legacy of an Iconic Space by Paula JohnsonThis volume by Paula Johnson, project director and co-curator of the exhibition Food: Transforming the American Table at the Smithsonians National Museum of American History, examines the kitchen of one of the 20th centurys most famous and beloved chefs. A respectful homage to Julia Childs legacy through interviews with those who knew her, a compelling narrative and beautiful photography, the book scrutinizes Childs recipe test labonce in her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and now fully intact at the museum. The workspace includes her favorite tools and gadgets, appliances, artwork and dcor, books, and more. A foreword by French chef and television personality Jacques Ppin is a cherry on top. Julia Child's Kitchen: The Design, Tools, Stories, and Legacy of an Iconic Space Julia Child's Kitchen is a gorgeous dive into the beloved cookbook author and television stars favorite place in the worldher home kitchenand how this space has influenced the ways we cook today.A Call to Farms: Reconnecting to Nature, Food and Community in a Modern World by Jennifer GraysonInvestigative journalist Jennifer Grayson embedded herself in a training program for new farmers in central Oregon during the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her purpose was to explore how the newest generation of farmers are working to create a more sustainable and regenerative agriculture when things are only getting more expensive, soil is more degraded, and food systems are more industrial. In A Call to Farms, readers meet numerous farmers and food activists across the United Statesa couple farming a one-acre plot in Oregon, a woman teaching other Black women how to grow crops for their communities in South Carolina, the director of a permaculture school in North Carolina and more. Together, Graysons portraits paint a picture of the future of American farming. A Call to Farms: Reconnecting to Nature, Food, and Community in a Modern World Hope for the future lies with a new generation of regenerative farmers.Our South: Black Food Through My Lens by Ashleigh ShantiBorn in St. Marys, Georgia, and raised in Virginia Beach, Ashleigh Shanti followed her culinary career dreams to North Carolina. She won a James Beard Rising Star Chef Award for her time at Benne on Eagle in Asheville, North Carolina, and competed on season 19 of Top Chef before opening her own restaurant in Asheville, called Good Hot Fish, earlier this year. Shantis aim with this cookbook is to expound on the complexities of Black food, stating plainly that its not a Southern cookbook, Appalachian cookbook or soul food cookbook. Instead, it is cooking through her lens, which encompasses all of those and more, making it difficult to put it into a simple box. Our South has sections devoted to Backcountry, Lowcountry, Midlands, Lowlands and Homeland, with recipes like stewed rabbit with preserved carrot pure, blackened flounder chowder with turkey tails, buckwheat noodle bowls, and her moms sausage and rice stuffed eggplant with tomato-peanut gravy. Our South: Black Food Through My Lens Raised in Appalachia, native daughter Ashleigh Shanti, a queer Black woman and acclaimed chef, knows Southern Black cooking means more than weve come to believe. While hot buttered cast-iron-pan cornbread and crunchy, juicy, lard-fried chicken have their roles to play, they are far from the entire story.The League of Kitchens Cookbook: Brilliant Tips, Secret Methods & Favorite Family Recipes From Around the World by Lisa Kyung GrossThe League of Kitchens is a cooking school in New York City. But instead of stuffy instructors from intimidating backgrounds, the teachers there are women who immigrated from around the world and landed in New York, who want to share their native cuisine. Founded in 2014 by Lisa Kyung Gross, the daughter of a Korean immigrant and a Jewish New Yorker, the League of Kitchens offers connection and cultural engagement through cooking. The League of Kitchens Cookbook mixes profiles of some of its instructors with a hefty helping of their cherished family recipes. From murgir mangsho (Bangladeshi chicken and potato curry), to huevos con tocino y habanero (Mexican eggs with bacon and habanero chiles), to dadar jagung (Indonesian corn fritters with shrimp), to sharlotka s yablokami (Russian apple charlotte cake), its a real smorgasbord of different cuisines. The League of Kitchens Cookbook: Brilliant Tips, Secret Methods & Favorite Family Recipes from Around the World Delicious, simple, family recipes from around the world from the instructors of League of Kitchensthe innovative and widely acclaimed cooking school in New York City.Bethlehem: A Celebration of Palestinian Food by Fadi KattanFadi Kattan is a Franco-Palestinian chef and hotelier who was born and raised in Bethlehem. Today, he co-owns the six-room boutique hotel Kassa in Bethlehem and the restaurant Akub in London, which serves modern Palestinian food. His debut cookbook, Bethlehem: A Celebration of Palestinian Food,kaek al-quds and eggs, the sesame-covered bread seen all over Jerusalem and here filled with baked eggs and zaatar spice. Bethlehem: A Celebration of Palestinian Food Bethlehem is a celebration of Palestinian food and culture from one of the areas most dynamic chefs and a portrait of one of the most storied cities in the world.Dac Biet: An Extra-Special Vietnamese Cookbook by Nini Nguyen with Sarah ZornLearn to cook three variations of pho with all the trimmings, a Viet Cajun seafood boil and an addictive ginger scallion sauce youll want on just about anything, all in this cookbook by two-time Top Chef contestant Nini Nguyen. Dac biet means special in Vietnamese, and Nguyen, born and raised in New Orleans by Vietnamese immigrants, uses the title to highlight her special twists on classic Vietnamese and Cajun dishes in the 100 recipes inside the book. Her distinctive point of view shines in culinary inventions like coconut crispy rice crepes and a banh mi-po boy mash-up. Dac Biet: An Extra-Special Vietnamese Cookbook A collection of contemporary, extra-special Vietnamese recipes, from beloved classics like Hanoi-Style Vermicelli with Grilled Pork and three variations of ph, to dishes with a New Orleans twist, like Southeast Asian Jambalaya and Sticky Fried Shrimp Bnh Mfrom Top Chef contestant and acclaimed chef Nini NguyenFrostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet and Ourselves by Nicola TwilleyWhile its probably hard for most of us to imagine life without a refrigerator and freezer, there was a time not too long ago when these luxuries didnt exist. In Frostbite, journalist and podcast host Nicola Twilley dives into the history of refrigeration and takes readers on a tour of the so-called cold chain, the network of refrigerated trucks, rail cars, shipping containers and warehouses that fruits and vegetables typically travel before hitting a grocery stores produce section. This illuminating title details the immense impact this innovation has on everything from our health to global economics to the environment, revealing that its not all positive. Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves An engaging and far-reaching exploration of refrigeration, tracing its evolution from scientific mystery to globe-spanning infrastructure, and an essential investigation into how it has remade our entire relationship with foodfor better and for worseSlow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss and Family Recipes by Chantha NguonWhen Chantha Nguon was 9 years old, her life was upended by Pol Pots genocide and civil war in Cambodia in the 1970s. She was able to move to Saigon in neighboring Vietnam, but lost much of her family, and eventually fled to Thailand, where she survived by cooking in a brothel, selling street food and taking on other jobs. In this heartbreaking memoir, she recounts her incredible struggle and perseverance, telling tales of her homeland before it was torn apart and recreating around 20 recipes of her youthgreen papaya pickles, Khmer curries, handmade banh canh noodles and moreas a means of staying connected to her past. Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchenMy Life in Recipes: Food, Family and Memories by Joan NathanBest-selling cookbook author and Jewish food authority Joan Nathan published her latest book earlier this year, using more of a memoir format to share her personal history with her ancestral cuisine. Nathan, now 81 years old, traces her familys history from their arrival in the United States from Germany to her own childhood in New York and Rhode Island through her years living in Paris, New York, Israel and Washington, D.C., sharing more than 100 recipes and food histories along the way. Recipes include salmon baked with preserved lemon and zaatar; Moroccan chicken with almonds, chestnuts, cinnamon and couscous; and her mothers family recipe for brisket, which first appeared in her 1994 book Jewish Cooking in America. My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories A new cookbook from the best-selling and award-winning author that uses recipes to look back at her life and family historyand at her personal journey discovering Jewish cuisine from around the worldGet the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox.A Note to our Readers Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. If you purchase an item through these links, we receive a commission.