From the award-winning author James Salter and his wife, Kay - amateur chefs and terrific hosts - here is a lively, beautifully illustrated food lover's companion.

With an entry for each day of the year, Life Is Meals takes us from a Twelfth Night cake in January to a champagne dinner on New Year's Eve. This is a book rich with culinary wisdom, history, recipes, literary pleasures, and the authors' own stories of their triumphs - and catastrophes - in the kitchen.

Entries include:
The menu on the Titanic on the fatal night
The seductiveness of a velvety Brie or the perfect martini
How to decide whom to invite to a dinner party - and whom not to
The greatest dinner ever given at the White House
Where in Paris Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter had French onion soup at 4:00 a.m.
How to cope with acts of god and man-made disasters in the kitchen

Sophisticated, practical, opinionated and indispensable, Life Is Meals is a tribute to the glory of food and drink, and the joy of sharing them with others.