Surprised at the lack of scholarship on women and food—"surely women spent more time in the kitchen than they did in the bedroom, yet everybody was studying women and sex"—author Laura Shapiro decided to take matters into her own hands. In this unusual, illuminating, and wholly entertaining "culinary biography," Shapiro presents delectable mini profiles of six fascinating women, finding that "in every instance, opening a window on what she cooked and ate cast a different light on the usual narrative of her life." What She Ate offers a fresh and intimate glimpse into Dorothy Wordsworth (and her infatuation with her famous poet brother), Rosa Lewis (an Edwardian-era British caterer who cooked her way up the social ladder), Eleanor Roosevelt (who presided over some famously bad meals at the White House), Eva Braun (Hitler's mistress and a notoriously light eater), novelist Barbara Pym (whose fiction smartly upends many culinary and domestic stereotypes), and finally Helen Gurley Brown (the Cosmopolitan editor who challenged gender roles, yet starved herself to stay thin). With sharp prose and brilliant insight, this is a smart, satisfying collection to be ruminated upon and savored.

(AG)

This title is part of our 2018 Life Stories Book a Month Package.