Peace, Love & Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue: A Cookbook

I bought a high-end (Lang) offset smoker a year ago. I was raised in the South, so I am no stranger to BBQ (slow cooked meat usually with wood). This was my 5th book on the subject. Most of them I purchased, tried a rub or sauce recipe, and retired to the shelf. However, Peace, Love and BBQ is different. It is the real deal. I am not a reader, but I find myself picking up this book and just reading for ideas and inspiration. It makes me hungry every single time. BBQ varies from region to region, and this book helps you understand regional preferences. It covers the fundamentals and provides recipes based on ACTUAL success stories of people and restaurants.If you are a BBQ fan, this is your book. Buy this one first and save yourself some money. It covers a wide range of flavors in recipes that meld together in the BBQ world as determined by judges and customers. As with any cookbook, when you get a good foundation, you can adjust to your tastes as necessary (i.e. adjust spices for sweet or heat). Understanding that BBQ is a hobby, and admitting that I am biased, this is the best cookbook on a culinary subject that I have ever purchased! I believe that this book will change my approach to BBQ indefinitely. What a bargain.

The first rule of BBQ Club? Don't talk about BBQ Club. I've been doing BBQ for about three years now, perfecting my own sauces, rubs and techniques. What I found in Peace Love and Barbecue is an atypical book that is more helpful than not. It is fun to read, very folksy and has lots of pictures. Its recipes are not uniformly good, neither are they all bad. This book, unlike other books I have read on the subject, winks at the reader a lot. It lets you know that no good BBQ master truly lets go all his secrets, even while purporting to be doing just that. It covers all types of BBQ, has a lot of good history in it and I would say it provides at the very least, a very solid starting point for anyone who is looking for a foundation to build on. It reads like it is more honest than other books on the subject, but when I compare my own personal experience with what is found in the book, I find some of the information to be very mainstream - and not quite correct, almost as if Mike is happy to leave you with conventional wisdom on the subject rather than really get down into the nitty gritty of what made him such a winner. Still, all-in-all, it's a marvelous book, my favorite BBQ book so far, and I highly recommend it.

I enjoy this book; the narrative is light, fun and full of not just interesting tips and tricks, but commentary on the rich (often recent) history of barbecue in the US.My one warning is that potential buyers should understand that, despite "recipes" being the first and largest word in the subtitle, they are relatively rare compared to the rest of the aspects mentioned. Many sections are accompanied by recipes; however, they are the exception rather than the rule.This is not to say that what's provided isn't great -- it most certainly is. It is also important to mention that when you are given recipes, they're often more than just "mix these together and cook them for this amount of time;" the authors tend to expound more on the actual ideas behind, for instance, dry rubs and sauces than simply giving a few recipes and calling it good. Dry rub development is given a thorough treatment, and explanations are provided for the various regional sauce preferences you're likely to find throughout the nation.I do recommend this for people interested in barbecue in general, particularly for its history; with respect to the quality of the writing itself, I doubt it gets much better. However, if you're looking for a cookbook, I suggest leafing through this at a bookstore first to see if it fits your needs.

I bought the kindle edition of this cookbook. IMHO (that's "Humble" in the South) I do LOVE bbq, having tried many Memphis bbq joints. My husband and I are working our way over to Huntsville to try the recommendations from this book. I love the recipe hyperlinks that are combined at the end of the book. You can jump to any recipe via a hyperlink. I love the hyperlinks at the page numbers. Most of all- I just wanted to thank all the people who gave the recipes for all of us to enjoy and Mr. Mills/daughter and staff for their time and endless energy in visiting all of these places and putting the book together. What fun! I'm planning to try as many of the recipes as I can this Summer. Can't wait to try the lemonade, bbq rubs, sauces and vinegar flavored slaw.

I bought this book (on Amazon) in 2007 when I was just really getting started smoking meat. Since then, it has become my "go-to" book for anything barbecue/smoke related. I really don't know how many times I have read it cover to cover. There is so much helpful information that I find myself coming back to, not to mention some great recipes and frankly, just plain good stories!I don't know whether this is the "real" magic dust formula, but then again, I don't really care either- the point of the book is to give you enough information to get you fired up (no pun intended) so that you start experimenting with your own rub, and it did the trick for me. I love to cook, I love to smoke meat, I love to sit around with friends and tell stories, and I love to read. This book gives me what I need to do all of that. I have never been to any of Mike Mills' restaurants but I can tell you that if I ever get the chance, I will.Whether you are a newbie to the smoke world, or an old hand, this book is highly recommended.

I bought this book right after it came out and taught myself how to cook BBQ, Southern Illinois style. Since then, I have purchased 11 more copies and given them to friends and family when they stated cooking BBQ. This gives you the basics and is a great resource for the beginner BBQ cooker.

Love the stories about bbq and the recipes are great too

Brought as a present for a "BBQ King" he loved it, some of the food made out of this book really is amazing! Great buy

Great bookHighest recommendation

Great book for bbq afficianados

Libro che ricostruisce ambiente, storie e personaggi del barbecue Usa; tanti aneddoti, tante chiacchiere, poche le ricette, design un po' piatto con foto bicolori.

Un titolo immancabile per qualsiasi cultore della cucina BBQ! Una vera bibbia per le salse e rub. Una filosofia di vita