Wow :) More than usual amount of common knife myths for one question.
First what few things that you should avoid.
1) Furi knives, Rachel Ray or any furi knives. They're very poor knives. Edge holding is pretty much non existent. Handle is really awkward and their marketing is very misleading.
2) Cutco knives. No better than furi, except outrageously priced.
Next, ignore all 3 main knife myths that pretty much any knife marketer will try to sell you that:
Good kitchen knives must be fully forged, must have full tang and bolster for safety.
NONE of those 3 statements above is true and later two are in direct contradiction to few thousand years of knifemaking and common sense as well.
No factory knife is fully forged for one. Stamped global knives outperform forged (fully or partly) Wusthofs, Henckels and others many to one.
Full tang is nothing required neither on the kitchen knife nor on any other, unless you plan to use your knife as a pry bar. Think yourself, full tang is for strength, now if Bowie knives and Japanese Katana swords could work perfectly well with stick tangs(half or 2/3 length of the handle), what could you possibly do in the kitchen harsher than cutting armor and chopping through the bones and leather? I suspect nothing even close ;)
Full tangs went into kitchen knives with the raise of factory knives, they're easier to machine and attach handle slabs, that's all.
Top end Japanese knives never have full tang, and we're talking hand forged few thousand $ priced blades.
Bolsters only make sense on very narrow blades, like boning knife, to prevent slipping to the blade. On wider knives handle/blade width difference does the job, no bolster needed. Hence less weight and less hassle with sharpening. Bolstered knives are notoriously harder to sharpen compared to non bolstered ones.
Now, for the knives. It'd help if you specified your budget though.
Good knife for cooking I assume means "good versatile knife for various types of cutting". In that case chef;'s knife or its Japanese cousin "Gyuto" is #1. Length is entirely up to you. They come from 6" to 12" and you can order custom made one if you want longer.
That covers most of the general cutting chores. Longer blades mean less fatigue in your elbow/shoulder as you won't have to raise your arm too high for rocking motion, or chopping otherwise.
Cutting meat is rather generic. For soft meat chef's knife will do too. For bony meat you need boning knife. For chopping frozen meat and bones you need meat cleaver or Japanese Deba type knife like these - http://zknives.com/knives/kitchen/ktknv/indexbyst.shtml?Deba
As for the brands, if you prefer western knives, then IMHO Forschner is the best bargain for the price. They're made of exact same X50CrMoV15 steel as Henckels and Wusthofs and many other western kitchen knives, same 54-56HRC hardness, but cost half the price. More on kitchen knives steels here - http://zknives.com/knives/kitchen/misc/articles/kkchoser/kksteelp2.shtml
If you want slightly better performance Messermeister is better steel and better initial edge.
Even better is chef's choice Trizor series. Unusually high 60HRC hardness for western knives. Very good quality. Pricey compared to forschners, but about the same price as top end Wusthofs and Globals.
If you want to get into Japanese knives then there's very wide choice. Misono, Susin, Aritsugu, Tojiro, Masamoto, Moritaka, Watanabe... All kinds of knives, all prices. Lots of them reviewed here - http://zknives.com/knives/kitchen/ktknv/index.shtml
By the way, Japanese knives are quite harder than western knives. That means increased edge holding, i.e. less sharpening for you, but more delicate edges. I know quite a few people who mishandled or simply dropped their Shuns and lost the tips of the knives or shipped blades badly.
So, if you plan on harsher use for your kitchen knives like whacking lobsters or coconuts with your chef's knife then perhaps better to stick with western knives. You sharpen them more often, but they won't chip that bad due to that sort of abuse.
As for the sharpening, well I've tried pretty much every exotic steel out there, CPM 10V, ZDP-189, CPM-125V, Aogami and Shirogami of all series, talonite and ceramics.. Everything needs sharpening in the end.
What is true, steeling or stropping will at least double the useful life of the sharp edge. Couple things though, ideally you need to strop or steel BEFORE using the knife. There is such thing as memory effect on metal, where the deformed metal tends to return to its deformed state after straightening it. So, best to steel before each use.
Second, and perhaps more important, avoid grooved butchers steel sold with 99% of the knives. They do a lot more damage to the edge than good. You need either smooth steel, or very fine ceramic rod or leather strop. Strop is the most effective, but not always reasonable in the kitchen.
More on maintaining kitchen knives here - http://zknives.com/knives/kitchen/misc/articles/kitknmntc.shtml