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What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories
Unavailable
What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories
Unavailable
What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories
Audiobook10 hours

What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

"Fascinating." Moira Hodgson, Wall Street Journal

"Mouthwatering."Eater.com

A beloved culinary historian's short takes on six famous women through the lens of food and cooking—what they ate and how their attitudes toward food offer surprising new insights into their lives.

Everyone eats, and food touches on every aspect of our lives—social and cultural, personal and political. Yet most biographers pay little attention to people's attitudes toward food, as if the great and notable never bothered to think about what was on the plate in front of them. Once we ask how somebody relates to food, we find a whole world of different and provocative ways to understand her. Food stories can be as intimate and revealing as stories of love, work, or coming-of-age. Each of the six women in this entertaining group portrait was famous in her time, and most are still famous in ours; but until now, nobody has told their lives from the point of view of the kitchen and the table. 

It's a lively and unpredictable array of women; what they have in common with one another (and us) is a powerful relationship with food. They include Dorothy Wordsworth, whose food story transforms our picture of the life she shared with her famous poet brother; Rosa Lewis, the Edwardian-era Cockney caterer who cooked her way up the social ladder; Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady and rigorous protector of the worst cook in White House history; Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, who challenges our warm associations of food, family, and table; Barbara Pym, whose witty books upend a host of stereotypes about postwar British cuisine; and Helen Gurley Brown, the editor of Cosmopolitan, whose commitment to "having it all" meant having almost nothing on the plate except a supersized portion of diet gelatin.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 25, 2017
ISBN9781524778088
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What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories

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Rating: 3.499998181818182 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Food writer Laura Shapiro examines the lives of six prominent women through their "food stories" in this collective biography. The women are:
    • Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of the poet William Wordsworth, whose evocative reference to "black puddings" in her diary summarizes the vicissitudes of her life.
    • Edwardian caterer Rosa Lewis, who hobnobbed with aristocracy but could never overcome her Cockney roots.
    • First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who used food as a weapon in her passive-aggressive war with her philandering husband.
    • Hitler's champagne-swilling, empty-headed mistress Eva Braun, who dieted as millions starved.
    • Author Barbara Pym, who celebrated the much maligned British cuisine in her domestic novels.
    • Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, who believed that a "tiny touch of anorexia nervosa" was good for a woman and her figure.
    This book provides an unusual, and long overdue, way of looking at women's lives. Recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Six fascinating women, some of whom I'd heard of, and some not. Loved hearing about Barbara Pym's attitudes about food and what she liked and didn't like. Similarly, I found Eleanor Roosevelt's chapter fascinating, as well. Not so much Helen Gurley Brown, though it was good to discuss the whole "never too thin" side of the coin, too. Interesting book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Women have a complex relationship with food. I include myself in that statement so I was interested in the subject matter of this book. Perhaps I could learn something about myself by reading about other women. The book was somewhat of a letdown in that respect but it was interesting.The six women highlighted were all well known in their time and I knew something about all of them but not much about their relationship with food. The first woman showcased was Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of the famous poet, and probably the least familiar of the group. Dorothy lived with and looked after her brother for many years so she provided the food that nurtured that poetic soul. She seems to have had no other ambition in life except looking after him and she certainly had no other close relationship with a man. Other women celebrated in this book also had obsessive attachments to men. Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, had no other goal in her life except to spend it with Hitler. Helen Gurley Brown, longtime editor of Cosmopolitan, thought the pinnacle of her life's achievements was getting David Brown to marry her. Both those women also had an compulsive personality when it came to dieting so perhaps OCD extended to all areas of their life. Two of the chapter subjects did actually seem to like food. Rosa Lewis was a poor Cockney girl who became famous as King Edward the VII's favourite cook (and perhaps his mistress). Barbara Pym wrote novels that celebrated English cookery along with middle-class English lives and she seems to have enjoyed cooking and eating. Eleanor Roosevelt doesn't really seem to match any of the others. Although she stayed married to FDR she could hardly be said to have been devoted to him after she discovered he was having an affair. She directed the White House kitchens to serve very plain food, cooked badly, and does not seem to have realized the food was bad. She was far too busy working on issues of the day such as civil rights, poverty and then World War II. She was also a champion of home economics being taught in school and college which may account for her inclusion in this book.I guess this book lives up to its subtitle. These women were all remarkable and they did all have a relationship with food, although for some it was a love-hate relationship. I don't imagine many readers will identify with these women; I certainly didn't. To paraphrase an old cigarette ad: We've come a long way, baby from the lives these women led. Women still struggle with their relationship with food however.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not sure how you can write this type of book and exclude Julia Child or Alice Walker

    1 person found this helpful