Collected here with the author's family recipes are those from all parts of America, as well as from Europe, Asia, Central America, and the Caribbean. Among these are delicious appetizers, tasty soups and chowders, luscious salads, and savory main dishes that feature blue crabs, Dungeness crabs, Alaskan king crabs, and Florida stone crabs.

If you catch and clean your own, there's useful information here on how best to proceed.

And interspersed with the recipes are fascinating stories from history, folklore, mythology, astrology, and archeology. For cooks, naturalists, and food lovers this treasury of crab lore reveals the strong appeal this enduring creature has cast over the world.