I am a home cook. I took a couple of bootcamp courses at the CIA several years ago, and Mark was one of my instructors. He was very good, and nice to home cooks, by the way. He tried to get us to think about the principles and techniques, and not just follow the recipes. I like CIA textbooks for this reason. I have several. In general they try to teach the principles, and use the recipes as a way to practice the principles. If you are looking for a bunch of good fish recipes, this is probably not the book for you. If you feel you are somewhat lost in a modern fish market, which is now the end distribution point in a complicated food delivery system, and suspect you are being bambozzled by a variety of good sounding names that dont tell you if the fish was prevoiusly frozen, or "well chilled", where the fish was caught, whether it was farm rasied, and if so, where it was farmed raised; then this is a book for you.