The Catfish Book by Linda Crawford Foreword by Craig Claiborne Here is everything that any reader, diner, cook, or angler could wish to know about the South's fish of choice. This light-hearted book of catfish facts and folklore offers you the catfish's consequential story because he is the darling of the southern depths-and, more recently, of southern catfish farms, where he is bred in refinement that his river brethren never dreamed of. Without the catfish how could the South survive? What would the state of southern plate and palate be without this staple? What is his great appeal? What is his family tree? How do you hook him? And if you do, how do you cook him? But first you have to clean him, so how do you do that? The Catfish Book provides ample answers to these momentous questions and to others just as acute. And cooks wishing to greet their catfish on the stovetop rather than on the riverbank will delight in this book's variety of award-winning recipes from the National Farm-Raised Catfish Cooking Contest. Linda Crawford served as executive director of South Delta Library Services and the Triangle Cultural Center in Yazoo City, Mississippi. Craig Claiborne (1920-2000) was a restaurant critic, food writer, and former food editor of the New York Times. A native Mississippian, he wrote numerous cookbooks and an autobiography.