Lisa Messinger's
Cookbooks of the Week

The Olive in California: History of an Immigrant Tree
by Judith M. Taylor (Ten Speed Press)

If you prefer an olive on your bookshelf to one in your martini, The Olive in California is for you. You won't be learning to make olive oil vinaigrette or a muffuletta, but you will learn about the first written record of olive oil being pressed in California in 1803 and the first Manzanillo and Sevillano olive trees imported from Spain. Accompanied by extensive vintage photographs, Judith M. Taylor's 300-page hardcover book is exhaustively researched (she's a retired Oxford-educated neurologist) and breezily written. And her enthusiasm is infectious: "The whole enterprise (researching the book) turned out to be the most intoxicating adventure," she writes. "I could never have known how fascinating the search would be. I did not know that I would explore the beginning of the Spanish colonization of California and the efforts to establish agriculture as a means of survival."