Scan barcode
A review by kairosdreaming
What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories by Laura Shapiro
4.0
I've read some of Shapiro's work before. Perfection Salad was interesting, although a bit dry. This book however, was anything but dry. A glimpse into the lives of six different women, through the foods they ate and recorded (or cooked!), it offered a view of history that is so often passed over.
Focusing on six different women; Dorothy Wordsworth, Rosa Lewis, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eva Braun, Barbara Pym, and Helen Gurley Brown, Shapiro examines the life of the woman and then sets to look through accounts, journals, and other histories that may have mentioned what these women ate or cooked. Because of course, only only of them could really be considered an actual cook by profession, it's more on the daily meals of life rather than the fancy or unique. It's the little details that describe how people live.
And as said before, this book wasn't dry. Instead it was a friendly narrative about each woman (well, as friendly as you can get with Braun), and told story-like the life of each woman. Of course food was touched on but sometimes it was just the faintest mentions of the type of food they may have mentioned they had for lunch. Or in some cases it was the feasts they prepared for others (Lewis). Regardless, I had only heard of a few of these women before this book (and never studied them in depth) and it allowed me to learn a lot more about such historical figures. Roosevelt especially I was surprised by.
A very good book and one to definitely read if you're interested in food history or women's studies.
Review by M. Reynard 2021
Focusing on six different women; Dorothy Wordsworth, Rosa Lewis, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eva Braun, Barbara Pym, and Helen Gurley Brown, Shapiro examines the life of the woman and then sets to look through accounts, journals, and other histories that may have mentioned what these women ate or cooked. Because of course, only only of them could really be considered an actual cook by profession, it's more on the daily meals of life rather than the fancy or unique. It's the little details that describe how people live.
And as said before, this book wasn't dry. Instead it was a friendly narrative about each woman (well, as friendly as you can get with Braun), and told story-like the life of each woman. Of course food was touched on but sometimes it was just the faintest mentions of the type of food they may have mentioned they had for lunch. Or in some cases it was the feasts they prepared for others (Lewis). Regardless, I had only heard of a few of these women before this book (and never studied them in depth) and it allowed me to learn a lot more about such historical figures. Roosevelt especially I was surprised by.
A very good book and one to definitely read if you're interested in food history or women's studies.
Review by M. Reynard 2021