Pat Martin’s first book, Life of Fire is much more than just a cookbook. Here, he reveals all he knows about the art of barbecue and open-flame cooking, in all the stages of a fire’s life. Through beautiful photography and detailed instruction, the lessons start with how to prepare and feed a fire–what wood to use, how to build a pit or a grill, how to position it to account for the weather—then move into cooking through all the stages of that fire’s life. You’ll grill tomatoes for sandwiches and infuse creamed corn with the flavor of char from temperamental, adolescent flames. You’ll grill chicken with Alabama white sauce over the grown-up fire, and of course you’ll master pit-cooked whole hog, barbecue ribs, turkey, pork belly, and pork shoulder over the smoldering heat of mature coals. You’ll roast vegetables buried in white ash, and you’ll smoke bacon and country hams with the dying embers of the winter fire.

For Pat Martin, barbecue, smoking, and grilling is a whole lifetime’s worth of practice and pleasure—a life of fire that will transform the way you cook.

Hardcover, 320 pages. Signed by Pat Martin.