Baking soda Over 500 fabulous, fun and frugal uses you've probably never thought of

You might wearily expect that a book with a title like this one is just another Hints from Heloise clone (which is not necessarily a bad thing), but in this case it's far better than that. For, besides an incredible accumulation of recipes and other uses for baking soda, this book contains an entertaining history of the baking soda industry and the story of how and why this wonderful substance came to be invented. Baking soda, Lansky says, is a wildly successful instance of a product developed to fill one specific need (i.e., "for an affordable, clean, consistent leavening agent") being found to have myriad other uses. Charming as this background is, the promised 500-plus uses of baking soda constitute the book's raison d'tre. Lansky easily fulfills the promise without resorting to list extenders of any kind, in the end producing a thoroughly enjoyable, useful little volume. --Mike Tribby