Chicago Tribune food reporter Monica Eng asked top chefs and cookbook authors who were gathered for the James Beard Book Awards ceremony in New York recently to name their favorite non-cookbook books about food. Here is some of what she learned:

Chef Thomas Keller: Blue Trout and Black Truffles: The Peregrinations of an Epicure, by Joseph Wechsberg. “It takes you to another place and time with its great stories. It’s just very nostalgic and a terrific read.”

Chef David Chang: The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine, by Rudolph Chelminski. “It teaches you the history and pressures of cooking surrounding Bernard L’Oiseau, the famous three-star French chef who committed suicide. It teaches you about everything from nouvelle cuisine to the present day. And it shows how hard-core cooking was back in the day, 30 years ago.”

Author Colman Andrews: The Food of Italy and The Food of France, by Waverley Root. “I’ve been reading them for a cookbook I’m working on. They are huge books that take you through region by region of the respective countries. Now they are a little out of date and not entirely accurate, but they are amazing books that really give you a feeling of the countries.”

Author Ted Lee, of the food writing team the Lee Brothers: The Gumbo Tales, by Sara Roahen. “For guys like us who grew up in the low country, that is our frame of reference for Southern food. But this is about a woman from the Midwest who goes to New Orleans and discovers the city through the food. She’s not inclined to love it because she is a vegetarian, but it’s just a miracle work, and you see New Orleans in a whole new way.”