Thank you for being part of the conversation. This is Play It Forward. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward Episode 569 With Steven Raichlen Creator Of The Barbecue Bible. Steven Raichlen is synonymous with barbecue. The James Beard Award-winning author of an impressive array of New York Times bestselling cookbooks, a Barbecue Hall of Famer, indefatigable barbecue anthropologist and a PBS star, he has shaped America’s obsession with live-fire cooking for decades. It started in 1998, when Workman published Raichlen’s groundbreaking THE BARBECUE! BIBLE, which fired a grilling revolution around the world, transforming the arts of smoking and grilling to the cult status it enjoys today. When this 500-recipe homage to global live-fire cooking was first published, American grilling was limited to simple summer weekend cookouts with little technique or creative thought. And now, it’s hard to believe that there was ever a time when grilling and barbecue weren’t ubiquitous American obsessions.