The Silver Spoon: Pasta
When I visit bookshops, I keep an eye out for cookbooks by Phaidon - many of those already on my shelves come from this publishing house. Its cookbooks tend to be straightforward - they won't walk you with great detail through a recipe, but the instructions are sufficient, providing you have a certain level of competence in the kitchen.
The Silver Spoon: Pasta greatly expands on the pasta chapter in The Silver Spoon, the 2005 English translation of the classic Italian cookbook Il Cucchiaio d'Argento, which was published in 1950.
The Silver Spoon: Pasta is broken down into two main sections: dried pasta and fresh pasta. The introduction includes a history of pasta (although there's no mention of the argument about whether it was the Chinese or Italians who 'invented' it), including an interesting titbit that it wasn't until the end of the 19th century that Italian pasta was cooked to what is now the accepted al dente; before that, fresh pasta was cooked for 30 minutes and more, while dried pasta was cooked for about an hour.
The book showcases the huge range of Italian pasta dishes: there's tagliatelle with white truffle; conchiglie with gorgonzola and pistachios; cannelloni with radicchio cream; trofie (thin pasta twists) with potato and turnip tops; lasagne Napoletana; buttered aubergine ravioli and stracci ('rags') with lobster.