Recipes for cooking up an eco-friendly kitchen

We just love it when you can judge a book by its cover. And with "Good Green Kitchens: The Ultimate Resource for Creating a Beautiful, Healthy, Eco-Friendly Kitchen," by Jennifer Roberts (Gibbs Smith, $29.95), the cover tells you exactly what to expect inside:

1. Whew. That's quite a title. The cover word-to-photo ratio is 15:1; it might be even higher inside. While there are lovely photos, many are smallish — this is not one of those page-after-page-of-pretty-pictures coffee-table books. You will need to read.

2. The cover is simple and clean, just like the book. No silly asides, no goofy gimmicks. Just straightforward (which does not mean dull) information and advice.

3. When Roberts says "ultimate," she means ultimate. If you can't come up with a green kitchen after reading this, you just weren't paying attention.

Roberts covers every topic you could imagine — and possibly some you couldn't — along a continuum of green (from "light green" energy-efficient appliances to "dark green" reclaimed wood).

She tackles lighting, air quality, floors, storage, counters, energy-efficiency, and cooking and eating, with reader-friendly tips, breakout boxes, pro-and-con charts and extensive resources.

In addition to dishing up all this information for anyone's kitchen, she also profiles 10 completed kitchens, proving that green concepts really can become reality. (In case you need even more information, she adds on a big bibliography and gigantic glossary.)

And remember: This isn't a book about everything you need to know about green building. This is an in-depth, immensely thorough book about kitchens. Only kitchens.

It said that on the cover, too. Twice.