Memphis is equal parts music and food--the products of a community marked with grit and resiliency. The city's blues and soul music have lifted spirits, while barbecue has been a serious business ever since pork first entered the culinary landscape of Memphis with Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, who brought the New World its first herd of pigs. Succulent pulled pork and ribs have become part of the fabric of life in the River City, and today they are cooked up in kitchens ranging from the internationally acclaimed, like Corky's, to the humblest of roadside dives. Told through the history of its barbecue is the story of the city of Memphis, from legendary joints like Leonard's Barbecue, where Elvis Presley hosted private parties, to lesser-known places like William's Bar-B-Q in the West Memphis, Arkansas neighborhood where wild, late-night blues juke joints served as a red-light district across the river from Beale Street in the 1950s and '60s. Sink your teeth into this rich history chock-full of interviews and insights from the city's finest pitmasters and 'cue gurus who continue the long tradition of creating art with meat and flame.

Some of the most sublime and exhilarating essays on the subject of food are collected here in Pennell's book, first published in 1896; this reproduction being the final edited and refreshed edition of 1922. Written as pieces for the Pall Mall Gazette, the resulting feast presents an awed love letter to culinary excellence. Pennell was a biographer and critic of art and cookery and, as a world-travelled gourmand herself, brought to her reviews an artist's sensibilities, aiming to reconfigure meals as high art, employing the language of aestheticism to turn dining into an act of intellectual appreciation. Quite simply one of the most accomplished works on the wealth that is food, A Guide for the Greedy is the perfect book for those who love any culinary adventure, cookery books and hedonistic literature in general. An absolute delight that will reignite your love of all food and awaken the epicurean in each of us. "Rejoice in the knowledge that gluttony is the best cosmetic."