Rating: 
Summary: Automatic "Betterness"
Review: If you read this book, you will automatically become a better cook, period, end of review.
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Summary: Chemistry!
Review: I love to cook and have quite a library of cookbooks. Missing however is a book that explains the chemistry of cooking and food. Now I have it with this book. It really provides the information that moves cooking to the next dimension. Thanks Alton.
Rating:
Summary: Fun
Review: Gave this book to a scientist friend for his birthday. He loves it. After I looked through his copy, I tried to buy it for myself and the store was out of copies.
Rating:
Summary: Mandatory reading for home cooks and culinary students
Review: A lot has been said here about how great this book is, and it's all true.
A superb intro into great cooking skills and the understanding of cooking methods.
I read this book before going into culinary school (Johnson & Wales) and it gave me an unfair advantage in my classes. While other students were struggling with the concepts, thanks to Alton Brown I already had them down to a science!
Mr. Brown, I thank you from the bottom of my high GPA.
Rating:
Summary: A must have in the kitchen
Review: Alton Brown has spent the last several years correcting everything that is wrong with cooking shows...mainly, they seem made for people who already know everything about cooking and food.In this book he brings all his knowledge to your fingertips for fast and easy reference. I use this book almost everytime I cook, not for the recipes but for the information behind a recipe. His show, and now his book, have helped my cooking tremendously. As in his show, this book covers every aspect of cooking (in this case meat). His explanations are thorough and scientifically sound. In fact, his book will most likely someday make it into our homeschool science curriculum. hehe
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Summary: I LOVE AB!
Review: The best book ever written....period.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a great book that didn't go quite far enough
Review: I'm a big fan of Alton Brown. He's a great, if silly character on TV. This book is written very much in Alton's personal style, which made it lots of fun to read...for a while. About 3/4 through it I got bored. Really. I can't put my finger on why, but it just lost steam. As in his TV show Alton gives great advice and sometimes wacky but workable ideas like hooking a hair dryer up to your BBQ. Buy it, you'll certainly get your money's worth and I'm actully looking forward to his next one...if I can ever finish this one. Strange but true.
-P-
Rating:
Summary: The Cooking Science Primer
Review: What I know about cooking was learned through exprience and a few good books. I didn't find this book particularly useful as a "cook book", but if I had read it before I started experimenting in the kitchen (about a century ago)I'd have found it much easier to understand why so many of my early cooking experiences were failures.
I have some trouble watching AB on Good Eats. The slap-stick doesn't appeal to my sense of comedic entertainment, but AB does a terrific job of making the science of cooking easy to understand and this book is chock full of those "cooking science 101" examples.
Rating:
Summary: Not a cook book but a how to cook book
Review: Some reviewers seem to miss the point of this book.
If you don't know how to manage the heat, you will not have good results in your recipes. This is more of a how-to style book than just a book of recipes.
I would make the analogy to the old saying "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime." This may not teach you all of the tricks to "fishing", but it gets you most of the way there. The rest probably needs to be experienced.
Rating: 
Summary: AB screwed up on this one.
Review: I probably own 40 cookbooks, and I am a die hard Alton Brown fan--I have a TIVO full of Good Eats episodes to prove it. There are few people I would rather have dinner with than Alton or possibly Tony Bourdain. Occasionally, Alton will misstep and create an episode of Good Eats that is purely for hardcore fans only (see his awful pot roast episode or the homemade bacon/junkyard cooking contest episode to see what I mean). This book is another example of Alton gone overboard. The book has an interesting design (you can tell that someone with an MFA in design went nuts with it), but it has no pictures and some of the densest prose this side of Henry James. The recipes are scattered in terms of usefulness (I can't tell you how may times I've turned to it for reference and been disappointed). Basically, the book lacks all of the sincerity and multitasking charm of the show. I know the book isn't necessarily supposed to be a companion to the show, but come on! We all know that Alton is a huge fan of Harold McGee and Shirley O'Corriher..."On Food & Cooking" and "Cookwise" put this book to shame. I do like the refence sections in the back of the book. It nice to see Alton put his influences down for all to see. In retrospect it would be nice to see a publisher with some moeny and creativity use Alton the way he should be used--with color and pictures and more humor! What about a series of short books mirroring the best episodes of Good Eats? What about a series of single topic books like James Peterson's cookbooks? We'll see what comes next. In the end, I'm still an AB fan. Although, I never turn to the book anymore because I have too many other titles that HELP me when I need it. I hope Alton reads these reviews because someone needs to tell him to stay a little more cook-friendly. He actually suggested using an ironing board to cut long pasta in a recent episode! How is that helpful? I think he's too caught up in trying to make his viewers/readers think differently when he should be concerned with how to improve the quality of our cooking.
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