From the national editor and beloved former food critic at the New York Times comes a smartly-written, accessible, recipe-filled, authoritative guide to Thanksgiving dinner--not just surviving it, but pulling it off in style.

Things go wrong at Thanksgiving. Sam Sifton knows this because, for three years, he manned the Thanksgiving Help Line at the highly-trafficked website of The New York Times. When birds got burned, when gravy separated, when pies settled: Sam Sifton was there. Thanksgiving comes out of his experience, but it also draws on the decades of holiday cooking Sifton has done for friends and family. It's a book that gives comfort, and speaks with authority. It is a book for briners and those morally opposed to brining, for people who have always dreamed of deep-frying their turkey, smoking their turkey, or roasting their turkey in parts. Need help setting the table properly? Choosing your wines and whiskies? Picking the perfect side dishes? Clueless about when to start cooking what? Need advice on how to deal with cranky relatives and picky kids and the issue of television in general and football in particular? Aiming to simply enjoy the day? Thanksgiving to the rescue. In addition to answering all your holiday meal questions, it's an elegantly written, beautifully illustrated and, most important, useful book from one of the finest food writers working today.