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Selling books through the mail used to be big business before there was such a thing as Amazon.com, and before there was even a "Warner" (let alone an AOL), "Time Life" was a publishing company that was very good at it. Two cookbook series, hatched approximately a decade apart, Foods of The World (started in 1968) and The Good Cook (started in 1979), came out of Time Life's marketing departments and made food writing history. No cookbook collector should be without either, and no professional library should miss the latter.

In the February 2006 issue of Saveur (Number 90), The Foods of the World's contributor, Dale M. Brown recounts how Time Life marshaled America's best food writers for their ambitious new series. The very first edition, The Cooking of Provincial France was written by M.F.K. Fisher no less. The American Cooking volume was written by James Beard, and contributors to other volumes (27 total) included Julia Child and Craig Claiborne, the influential restaurant critic for the New York Times, at the time.

The books are high on narrative, and reflect the Life magazine ethos of the time: explaining different culinary cultures as much as showing them. They are full of full photos of natives on the land as much standard food styling fare. Perhaps this is why the Foods of the World series is more sought after than the the more serious Good Cook series.

I have yet to visit an established food person and not seen the muted yellow, green and brown spines of Richard Olney's masterpiece series for Time Life: The Good Cook. This series has an odd pedigree, since it was directed out of Time Life's offices in Holland, and composed by Olney and his contributors (notably Jane Grigson) in London. Certainly there was hope that the Good Cook, the first edition published in 1979, would repeat the success of Foods of the World, especially in Europe where the first series had sold surprisingly well.

Olney really considered his editorship to be one of his great works, and describes the process and the importance of the job at length in his memoir, Reflexions. (He also describes spending many afternoons getting drunk with Elizabeth David during his time in London, which is heady stuff for foodie nerds.) but what's great about the Good Cook, isn't Olney's writing: it's his attention to detail and insistence on proper technique. This is a bible for home cooks (and, I guess, a few pros), replete with colour photo illustrations on everything to do with the table, even how to taste wine.

The second great thing about the Good Cook series are the meticulously researched recipes at the back of each volume. Olney, Grigson et al were not just interested in technique, they were also food historians and students of their contemporary masters. They collected wonderfully diverse recipes, sometimes spanning centuries.

Look for these books at used book shops and websites, but don't over pay. As sought after as each series is, there were millions of them published. Look online for prices as low as a few dollars a piece.

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