They also have an excellent book, covering both the subject matter (knives and sharpening) and how the company came to be.

Somewhat similar to the book of the Blue Bottle founder on coffee and his company path. Both are basically, as the GP remarked, are glimpses into other people's passion and deep fascination with a certain subject. Fantastic reads IMO.

* In fact, let me add two more books - Ivan Ramen and Tartine Bread. Similar introductions into lives of people and their obsessions with a specific subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Definitive-Introduction-Sharpen...

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Bottle-Craft-Coffee-Roasting/dp/...

https://www.amazon.com/Ivan-Ramen-Obsession-Recipes-Unlikely...

https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/08118...

If anyone knows other books of the same nature, I'm all ears.

Somewhat unrelated, but my wife has recently found a way to make _awesome_ European (aka actually edible) bread at home, using a very simple recipe. The protip is you need to bake it in a well pre-heated Dutch oven, that's how you get the crust right. Commercial ovens inject steam for the same purpose, but you can't do that at home. Dutch oven apparently simulates the same effect. A $5 loaf of "fancy" bread can be baked at home easily with ~50c worth of ingredients. She used this book to figure this out: https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/08118.... She tried numerous recipes from it (some of which were ridiculously elaborate), but the simplest and least time consuming one turned out to also be the best, not to mention the most practical on the day-to-day basis.

I can recommend two books: Tartine I and Italian Baker. There are many like this but these two I used and liked.

https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/08118...

https://www.amazon.com/Italian-Baker-Revised-Countryside-Its...

Tartine Bread, ISBN: 0811870413

There are a few in the series, but get the first one.

https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/08118... (not an affiliate link)