Food touches on every aspect of our lives as humans on this planet. Whether at family get-togethers, restaurants both exalted and humble, or just solo at the kitchen counter, we eat to live—and live to eat. At global policy summits, experts convene to solve the problems of world hunger and climate change, both affected by the food we grow or manufacture and by the ways we supply that food to people. We at Kirkus know this because we see the wide range of books that touch on food in some way—from romance novels to philosophical manifestos to children’s picture books. Hence our second-annual Food Issue.

Alexander Smalls, who appears on the cover in a portrait drawn by Frank Morrison, is to our mind a culinary citizen par excellence. He’s been an opera singer, a chef, a restaurateur (Café Beulah, Minton’s, the Cecil), a cookbook author (Grace the Table, Between Harlem and Heaven), and now, with Morrison providing the artwork, a children’s picture book author (When Alexander Graced the Table). Above all, as he shows contributor Lisa Kennedy in a lively interview, he’s the consummate host, setting the table for a bevy of fascinating friends to gather for conversation and fellowship over good food. (I’m waiting for an invitation so that I, too, can sample the buttermilk mac and cheese he extols.)

Throughout the issue’s many profiles and columns, you’ll find the diversity of food writing well represented. And not to worry—nonfiction editor John McMurtrie spotlights some of our favorite new cookbooks. Meanwhile, here are a few titles that I’ve been excited to discover while putting the issue together:

All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now by Ruby Tandoh (Knopf, September 9): We seem to be trapped in an age of food extremes, writes the British baker and cookbook author, caught between faddish food trends disseminated by social media and unthinking devotion to a handful of recipes we cook on autopilot. “An entertaining, endlessly instructive look at why we like what we do in our ‘anarchic web of desire,’” writes our critic in a starred review.

The Last Supper: How To Overcome the Future Food Crisis by Sam Kass (Crown, October 7): The author, a restaurant chef who cooked for then-senator Barack Obama and Michelle Obama and joined them in the White House as a senior food policy adviser, is looking at the big picture. He intends the book not to be “just another in a long line of familiar diatribes” but a pragmatic road map to changing the way we eat and produce food.

What To Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How To Find It, and Why It Matters by Marion Nestle (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, November 11): This volume is an update of the 2006 book by the acclaimed 89-year-old nutritionist. But, the author assures us, this is an “almost entirely new book—new information, new examples, whole new chapters.” It’s a reassuring handbook for consumers that walks us through the aisles of the supermarket and offers expert advice. Our starred review calls it “essential reading for anyone who cares about how we fuel ourselves.” And isn’t that everyone?

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.