Leave Me Alone With the Recipes ─ The Life, Art, and Cookbook of Cipe Pineles

The newly discovered illustrated 1940s recipes of wildly influential yet unsung food-lover and designer Cipe Pineles, introducing her delectable work in food and art to a new generation.

Not long ago, Sarah Rich and Wendy MacNaughton discovered a painted manuscript at an antiquarian book fair that drew them in like magnets: it displayed a vibrant painting of hot pink beets and a hand-lettered recipe for borscht written in script so full of life, it was hard to believe it was more than sixty-five years old.

It was the work of one of the most influential graphic designers of the twentieth century--Cipe (pronounced "C. P.") Pineles, the first female art director at Condé Nast, whose impact lives on in the work of Maira Kalman, Julia Rothman, and many others. Completed in 1945, it was both a keepsake of her connection to her childhood’s Eastern European food--she called it Leave Me Alone With the Recipes--and, for Wendy and Sarah, a talisman of a woman they had not known was their idol: a strong, independent spirit whose rich archive--of drawings, recipes, diaries, and letters to family and friends--led them into a dazzling history of design, art, food, New York City society, and culture in the middle of the American century.

They teamed up with Maria Popova of BrainPickings and Debbie Millman of Design Matters, along with contributors Mimi Sheraton, Steven Heller, Joel Levy, and Maira Kalman, to present Cipe Pineles’s life and work as it should be presented--in glorious color. With Pineles’s illustrated cookbook and a section of updated recipes as its centerpiece, this gorgeous volume will delight foodies and design devotees alike.

Cipe Pineles was the first female art director at Conde Nast, and a graphic designer and art director for several popular magazines.

Sarah Rich is the author of Urban Farms and co-author of the bestselling Worldchanging.

Wendy MacNaughton is a graphic journalist and illustrator of the bestselling cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, the New York Times bestselling The Gutsy Girl, and many others.

Debbie Millman is the author of six books on design and branding and President Emeritus of AIGA.

Maria Popova is a reader and a writer, and the creator of Brain Pickings.