Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

The Elements of Cooking - Michael Ruhlman
How to Cook Everything Vegetarian - Mark Bittman or
Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone - Deborah Madison; we need to add a great all inclusive vegetarian book to the library
How To Be a Better Foodie - Sudi Pigott
Food Snob's Dictionary - David Kamp
browsed Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler and The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn at my local Borders - want them both!
Nobody Likes a Quitter - Dan Dunn (looks like a scream)
my husband is reading Service Included by Phoebe Damrosch and I can't wait until he's done
wow, the list is really growing and it's a long way until xmas! luckily there's a b-day in there in between - yay

I do not recommend the Lee Bros book, I got it and it went right back. A good Southern Living Annual Cookbook has that and more.

Here is what I recommend.
All Rose Levy Bernbaum books, Nick Malgieri anything, All Dorie Greenspan, One copy of the Joy of Cooking for reference, One Rick Bayless, Alice Waters, David Lebovitz, Any of the Cook's Illustrated Cookbooks (I give these as gifts every year).
Mark Bittman, Lidia Bastianich, Marcella Hazan, Maryanne Esposito, Mario Batali.
The United States of Arugula, Any of the Tony Bourdain's especially Kitchen Confidential and any Ruhlman. I have bought Heat by Bill Buford but have not got to read it yet.
Don't forget magazine subscriptions which are also available on Amazon.com you cna pick all your favs including Gourmet, Saveur and Food and Wine on your list as well.
I am a firm believer in Cook's Illustrated (since 1993) and recommend you try an annual which are also available on Amazon. CI improved my cooking for years now and after 15 years it is still my run home to momma.

Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson. My family is big on the "no multiple gifts of the same type of thing" thing, so if I get anything, it'll just be the one.

I can personally recommend (all of these are excellent):

Food writing (mostly seconding previous mentions)
-The Man Who Ate Everything - Steingarten - absolutely hilarious
-The Making of a Chef - Ruhlman
-The Soul of a Chef - Ruhlman
-Heat - Buford
-Kitchen Confidential - Bourdain

Cookbooks
-Bouchon (Keller/Ruhlman)
-The New Best Recipe (Cook's Illustrated)
-The Bread Baker's Apprentice - Reinhart
-On Food & Cooking - McGee

The Les Halles cookbook is pretty fun to read too. All of Bourdain's books are available signed from the Les Halles site, by the way.

I have a few more I'm excited about but haven't gotten to yet:
-American Pie - Reinhart
-Bread: A baker's book of techniques and recipes - Hamelman
-My Mexican Kitchen - Kennedy

corycm - it's not that they are exactly abridged but just different things are added or removed as new editions appear over the years, I guess based on what the editors believe the readers will be interested in.

Some of the things that have been removed from the more recent editions one might say are in the category of arcana. Things about how to clean and cook cockscombs, for example (though that is not an exact description, that's the sort of thing). The books have been cleaned up for a marketplace that does not want to know that chickens (those things that are made into white meat breasts without skin and packaged into little blue styrofoam containers to be broiled on the George Foreman grill) actually are stinky little birds and a big mess to kill and clean. Notes on cooking unusual animals (think Waverly Root at his best) are in the older editions. Not anything any normal person would need, likely, but just fun stuff if you like that sort of thing. "Where Our Food Comes From" but not in a food politics sense but a get your fingernails really dirty sense. I've also heard that the Francophone/Francophile tone is stronger in the older editions.

More than one credible source have said that the 1961 edition is the best one out there. My 1971 edition is falling apart - it is in bits and pieces. It did have some of this stuff but they say the 1961 has more. The newer editions I've seen have bored me.

Aaaargh. After going on like this about it, I'm just going to go order it right now.

I'm still only part way through Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Already lusting after Michael Pollan's new book due out in January, In Defense of Food, An Eater's Manifesto.

Otherwise a huge stack to still read from the existing 200-plus cook/food book collection, some of which have never been cracked open. It's a disease beyond an obsession with me.