By Margaret Yardley Potter
240 pages; Mc Sweeney's
Available at: Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

When first published in 1947, At Home on the Range, by Margaret Yardley Potter, must have seemed a shockingly non-girly truth-talking cookbook and life guide. Read today—as introduced in a new McSweeney's edition by Potter's great-granddaughter, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert—it is both artifact and artfully useful. Choice bit: Potter, who died in 1955 at the age of 62, liked to invite guests not for dinner but rather for breakfast—"en negligé." We're not surprised that Gilbert, who celebrates her "Gima" throughout, comes from such feisty stock.

— Sara Nelson