This is an interesting book. It includes entries on 1,500 assorted cooking ingredients from around the world, including assorted vegetables, fruits, meats, seafood, etc.
STRENGTHS:
* Lots of photos.
* Encyclopedic breadth.
WEAKNESSES:
* This is an encyclopedia of ingredients - there are no recipes. It's a reference book.
* Lots of breadth, but no depth. Any given entry just gives a very general minimalistic overview of where something is from, and very general/vague over-view type information on use/consumption (i.e., whether it's roasted, stewed, fried, sauteed, or served raw - but no information on how to do any of that). The book routinely fails to give useful tips on things like how to tell if something is optimally ripe or not, how to store it, etc.
* Some categories of "ingredients" are dealt with in less detail than others ... such as herbs and spices. It does cover them, but not exhaustively. If you want good coverage of such things, you have to look elsewhere.
* As a reader on amazon remarked, not all ingredients have pictures, and many of the pictures are far bigger than is necessary.
* There are occasional errors and omissions. For instance - the book erroneously suggests that "pawpaws" and "papayas" are synonymous. They are NOT. I know, because I recently had a 2 hour in-depth conversation about it with a friend of mine who wants to experiment with growing the former and making jams & wine with them.
Bottom line: If you're a foodie or a chef looking to expand your culinary horizons, this is a good book for light reading. Just open to a page at random, and go.
Enjoyability = 7/10
p.s. The version I have is slightly different than the one I entered in the database. However, aside from minor differences in the title and format (paperback vs hardcover), they appear to be essentially identical.