A great cookbook for a beginner or someone who wants some help with techniques and basic flavors. The recipes are simple, and the techniques adequately explained with beautiful color photographs.
I wouldn't mind owning this one!

We use this at least once a week! It's definitely my favorite all-purpose cookbook.

This is a great book. It covers the basics for beginners, but as a not-a-beginner I loved the advice on how and where to buy ingredients. It also has a lot of great foundational recipes for a ton of different dishes you can build off of.

If you come over to eat at the Caiazzo's... chances are you'll be consuming one of Bittman's recipes, or a variation on something learned from his careful explanation of the basics. This book provides background information in each section prior to recipes, helping readers understand the foundations of cooking so they know how and why they can alter later recipes on their own. Each recipe also has suggested variations and a realistic explanation of which ingredients could be optional in a pinch. I am not sold on all of his bread recipes, and I find that he underestimates the time required to pan sear chicken breasts to completion (unless you butterfly or julienne them) but other than that this book is my bible of cooking. See also his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian - it should supplement any omnivore's repertoire. (It's not just for vegetarians.)

I adore Bitten, Bittman's NY Times column. But he does talk about meat a lot, and doesn't especially like chocolate, and really doesn't care to bake. Which means that this book has little to draw my attention. It has a lot of good basic recipes (parathas, dutch babies, etc), but you could get the same from a used copy of Joy of Cooking.

Still, probably a good gift for meat eaters.

Absolutely, hands-down, desert-island, best god damn cookbook ever. It just works with the way I like to cook.

Found a great egg bake recipe, a peach smoothie recipe, and a raspberry sorbet recipe. It had helpful hints and recipe additions or subtractions. All in all a great cook book!

I read cookbooks like I read novels so of course I have opinion's on them. This book is so stain covered and dog eared because Mr. Bittman really does cover almost how to cook everything, starting simple and adding variations. It's well written, nothing too fancy-shmancy that you have to search around for and really delicious recipes.

I love this cookbook! It’s more reference tool than pretty picture book, but that’s ok! I love picking a subject and then reading about and gathering knowledge on HOW/WHY to cook. You can get rid of lots of celebrity cookbooks because you’ll know how to make the recipes without their book because you have this one!

I love to cook and I love to collect recipes. But I only have a few handfuls of cookbooks, and this is one of my favorites. While he may not include everything, it's Pretty Damn Close. Confident cooks can wing it from many of his recipes, and non-confident cooks can learn to be more so.
Love the index, love the menu planning sections. Love the intro to each chapter telling you how to select/handle/identify some of the ingredients in that chapter. Never heard of quinoa or chayote? This book will help you out.
Love that he's a big proponent of eating well, and eating healthily.