The classic barbecue book is back! Covering the hundred best barbecue joints in the United States, with full descriptions, directions, and porklore. Secret recipes and mail order finds are also included.

Chapter 1 - INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITIONChapter 2 - The history of barbecue, or as much of it as you’ll ever need to knowChapter 3 - Barbecue architecture: From Bauhaus to SowhausChapter 4 - Barbecue Is Where You Find It: Here’s How. . .Chapter 5 - Pig pickin’ Or How we selected the Hot 100 barbecue jointsChapter 6 - The SouthChapter 7 - Texas BarbecueChapter 8 - The Midwest Chapter 9 - The NorthChapter 10 - Cowboy-queChapter 11 - California-queChapter 12 - The Name GameChapter 13 - Barbecue FestivalsChapter 14 - You're only as good as your grill Chapter 15 - Secrets of the secret sauces Chapter 16 - Side DishesChapter 17 - Collector’s Items: Mail-Order MasterpiecesChapter 18 - Barbecue: A dying art?Chapter 19 - ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Praise for the first edition: "What Masters and Johnson did for sex, Staten and Johnson do for barbecue."- Willard Scott on “Today on NBC”"REAL BARBECUE is the only restaurant guide I've ever sat down with and read straight through cover to cover...(It is) the single best book on barbecue I've ever read."- The Washington Post"At once serious and irreverently lighthearted. Keep it with you when traveling because you never know when you'll need it."- The New York Times"The ultimate barbecue book."- Glamour magazine"The funniest, most energetic and thorough book ever published on this down and dirty American original (cuisine)."-New York Daily News"This book is to barbecue what Rand-McNally is to maps."- Playboy"Johnson and Staten can write, they are funny, they know good stories, and they have done massive research. This is a book to send to one's friends like Christmas cards. These boys are doing the Lord's work."- St. Petersburg Times"An excellent job in covering a story that spanned the country and took them months and more than 40,000 miles to pin down...They're really good journalists and they did their homework."- The Nashville Tennessean"This is a helluva readable book...There's as much flavor in the writing as in the Rev. Noble Harris' sauce at House of Prayer Bar-B-Que in Fort Lauderdale...Toss this on the dash and hit the road."- Gannett News Service"(Staten and Johnson are) the nation's foremost experts on barbecue."- Taxi magazine

Chapter 1 - INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITIONThe best thing to do with a book about barbecue is wipe your hands on it. That’s how we began the first edition of this book twenty years ago, and another thousand barbecue joints later, we feel the same way. No matter how brilliant the prose (and some of it is darned brilliant), reading about barbecue is like hearing about a hot date: It's interesting, but it's nothing like being there. The whole point of “Real Barbecue” remains to bounce you out of your Barcalounger and into the delicious world of great eating, from America's best BBQ joints to your own back yard.After publication of that first edition, Willard Scott called us the Masters and Johnson of barbecue. Playboy labeled us barbecue’s Rand-McNally. We prefer to think of ourselves as the Lewis and Clark of barbecue, blazing new trails, exploring the back roads of barbecue, discovering places previously known only to natives who lived in the neighborhood. When we headed out to find the great joints, there was nothing to guide us but smoke in the air and recommendations from friends. It has been two decades since we first published ‘Real Barbecue.’ In the interim our little ode to the slowest of the slow foods has become a cult classic. Which means it didn’t sell very well first time out. But that was before Amazon.com and the Internet. Now we’re back to tell you that real, slow-smoked, pit-cooked, fall-off-the-bone barbecue isn’t a lost art. Finding the real thing isn't always easy, and preparing it yourself requires a little effort, but it's there to be had. And it is truly the pinnacle of culinary creation, the most coddled and cared-for food in the world. Eating it is the goal; reading about it just gets you there.Luckily, your loyal and hard-working authors are back to assist you. We logged 40,000 miles for the first edition, visiting nearly 700 barbecue joints and burning the hair off a couple of knuckles rounding up and testing the very best this country has to offer. This expanded and revised edition incorporates eighteen years of leisurely sampling and another twelve months of serious swallowing, involving another 10,000 miles (not including air miles). It was a lot of eating, but it was worth it. We found sauces so rich and luxurious that we wanted to climb in the pot and bask in them. We found sauces with more snap than a set of new suspenders. There were ribs that had people speaking in tongues, and sandwiches that had businessmen sneaking them home in briefcases. In the end we regretted that we had but one gall bladder each to give to the cause. Besides the barbecue itself, there were the barbecue chefs - a friendly, entertaining and colorful bunch of folks who have dedicated their lives to a food that gets them up at four in the morning to stand in a sweltering room. Their determination to produce a product they can be proud of, no matter how demanding the effort, is evident in every steaming bite. It is what elevates barbecue joints, despite their modest means, above restaurants staffed with Cordon Bleu chefs and decked out in designer finery.Although this is called a travel guide, we prefer to think of it as more. We consider it a cultural anthropology of barbecue. And as much as barbecue is about great food it is also about great stories. We ended the original Introduction this way: Barbecue is more than a meal; it's a way of life. Twenty years later we can only add: Amen.