While fall truly belongs to the cookbooks, there's still a large selection on deck for the food lovers who are less than kitchen inclined. Along with anthologies from The New York Times (Eat, Memory) and The New Yorker (Secret Ingredients) finally arriving in paperback form, there are numerous reissues of old greats, doorstopper tomes perfect for that impossible-to-please food snob, and plenty of "the food system is killing us" doom and gloom. Our books editor Helen Rosner picks out the ones most worth paying attention to. On with the show.

Culinary Giants, Repackaged

Larousse Gastronomique: The World's Greatest Culinary Encyclopedia, Completely Revised and Updated
(Clarkson Potter, October 13; preorder on Amazon)
A complete overhaul of the indispensable 1938 volume, now including such au courant topics like sous vide cooking, molecular gastronomy, and biographic entries on stars like Ferran Adrià, Daniel Boulud, Alice Waters, Thomas Keller, and Julia Child.

The Physiology of Taste: or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, translated by M.F.K. Fisher
(Everyman's Library, October 6; preorder on Amazon)
The seminal meditation on gastronomy, sensualism, and happiness. Initially written in 1885 and now issued in beautiful edition by the collectible Everyman's Library in a high-quality hardcover.

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