From our favorite books of 2017:
I’ve been recommending this book to everyone. Shapiro chronicles the lives of six women — Dorothy Wordsworth, Rosa Lewis, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eva Braun, Barbara Pym, and Helen Gurley Brown — through the food they cooked and ate, and the result is utterly fascinating.

There’s currently a wave of food writing and seemingly no end in sight. If the trend continues I hope that isn’t bring us more of this style. Writing about food doesn’t have to be vague and one dimensional. It’s pointed and precise approach is what makes this work stand out. It’s thoroughly researched non-fiction without boring the reader. Precisely what I continually have an eye out for and am always happy to read!

Offbeat approach and entertaining, thoughtful research on a diversity of women that it will suit a wide range of readers -- I included this in the newspaper's big year-end holiday gift books list.

You never think about what women ate when thinking about a person's history. This book made the topic interesting and approachable. A great cook for a history lover or foodie.

I loved the concept for the book - learning about people through their food! Food writing, and specifically food memoirs are some of my favorite so this was already right up my alley. I really liked some of the chapters (Eleanor!) but HATED some (Pym!) so it was very hit or miss. I would definetly recommend someone who likes food memoirs to give his a shot.

This book is a triumph for anyone that enjoys food and history. The tale of wellknown women and how food affected their narrative. I felt like I got a personal glimpse in their day to day lives and little details ultimately shaped their personality. To me it says everything about Eva Braun that she was asking for cordials while contemplating her ultimate suicide with Hitler.

A great and informative read:)

Laura Shapiro, author of Julia Child : A Life, has written a culinary biography featuring six very unique women, who, unlike Child, were not necessarily known for being great cooks. The premise as outlined by the author in the introduction was intriguing: ""Tell me what you eat, I longed to say to each woman, and then tell me whether you like to eat alone, and if you really taste the flavors of food or ignore them, or forget them a moment later. Tell me what hunger feels like to you, and if you've ever experienced it without knowing when you're going to eat next. Tell me where you buy food, and how you choose it, and whether you spend too much. Tell me what you ate when you were a child, and whether the memory cheers you up or not. Tell me if you cook, and who taught you, and why you don't cook more often, or less often, or better. Please, keep talking. Show me a recipe you prepared once and will never make again. Tell me about the people you cook for, and the people you eat with, and what you think about them. And what you feel about them. And if you wish somebody else were there instead. Keep talking, and pretty soon, ... I won't have to tell you what you are. You'll be telling me." The six women Shapiro chose to research and answer those questions about will interest some readers who will enjoy the book as I did, and bore others, so I suspect the book will draw strong reactions. They span a historical period of 200 years and many will be unknown to modern readers. Two of her subjects from the World War II era will be known by most readers, Eleanor Roosevelt ( whose White House was known for indigestible food ) and Eva Braun (who loved champagne, catered to Hitler's vegetarianism, and cared mostly about having a slim figure ). Here is an excerpt about luncheon food regularly served in Roosevelt's White House: "There were curried eggs on toast, mushrooms and oysters on toast, broiled kidneys on toast, braised kidneys on toast, ... chipped beef on toast, and a dish called "Shrimp Wiggle," consisting of shrimp and canned peas heated in white sauce, on toast. ".Another figure, Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine from 1965 to 1977, was famous for her obsession with dieting and remaining thin at all costs: "“I have dumped champagne (which I adore) into other people’s glasses when they weren’t looking or, in a real emergency, into a split-leaf philodendron, wrapped eclairs in a hanky and put them in my purse, once in an emergency, sequestered one behind the cushion of an upholstered chair — in a napkin of course.”. She is famous, I think, for an era of women being made to feel that they should be thin to the point of anorexic to be considered beautiful. The three other women she chose to write about were fascinating to me but will be obscure to many modern readers: Dorothy Wordsworth, the sister of the famous English poet William Wordsworth, Barbara Pym, a British author, and the fascinating Rosa Lewis, who was born a Cockney in Victorian London, but became a famous cook, caterer, and hotelier for the high society Edwardian set including the King of England prior to World War I. Lewis was the subject of a great Masterpiece Theater drama in the past called The Duchess of Duke Street. Again, Shapiro's choices of her subjects were interesting to say the least, but I enjoy Shapiro's unique writing style so I very much enjoyed the book as I did Shapiro's biography of Julia Child. Thank you Viking and NetGalley for the advanced Reader's Copy of this book and for allowing me to review it.

Delicious and satisfying non-fiction for history and food lovers. This is exactly what great non-fiction is supposed to be.

The author's voice shines through without dominating or distracting from the topic. The persons discussed are all lively and unique and come right off the page. The prose is conversational, engaging, and packed full of interesting historical tidbits. I couldn't have enjoyed it more. The chapter on Eleanor Roosevelt was my favorite but Barbara Pym was a close second. Even though I have favorites, all of the six women are covered thoroughly and enjoyably. Every page was a delicious bite of history.

Note: I received a free Kindle edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank them, the publishers Penguin Group - Viking, and the author Laura Shapiro for the opportunity to do so.

This just was not what I wanted it to be. It was far less about the food mentioned in the title and more biography of each woman. Most of the information I already knew from reading biographies.

Laura Shapiro’s WHAT SHE ATE begins with an intriguing premise: “Every life has a food story, and every food story is unique.” Shapiro offers us revelatory glimpses of six vastly different women through the lens of food: Dorothy Wordsworth, Rosa Lewis, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eva Braun, Barbara Pym, and Helen Gurley Brown. This reader appreciated Shapiro’s rigorous scholarship (she got the idea for the book a decade ago), choice of subjects, and wry and entertaining presentation of her findings. Each vividly written chapter begins with a food-related epigraph—a meal related to the woman under consideration in the pages that follow. The portraits are mostly sympathetic, but I was particularly struck and surprised by Eleanor Roosevelt’s seeming cruelty in the way that she exercised power over FDR, who, confined to a wheelchair, seldom dined outside the White House. An example: Eleanor and her famously dreadful and unqualified White House housekeeper, Henrietta Nesbitt, fed FDR over several days, a steady diet of salt fish for breakfast and liver and beans for lunch until “he became truly irritated.” I also learned from Shapiro that chafing dishes were used by hostesses to prepare a dainty meal in front their guests (and that Eleanor prepared a weekly Sunday supper of scrambled eggs for FDR and their visitors—a tradition she maintained in their forty years of marriage and an image of Eleanor that I’ll never forget). Shapiro has found a key to understanding these women hiding in plain sight—uncovered as if under a dinner napkin. After finishing this book, which was provided to me by the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, I found myself musing on other subjects who I’d like to see explored in this way. I highly recommend this truly dishy read for anyone who enjoys culinary memoirs, food studies, biography, and cultural studies.

I love, love, this book! As I read, I kept thinking of what a skilled researcher Laura Shapiro is, and how adept she is at taking that huge mass of information and turning it into highly readable and compelling, portraits of her subjects, as seen through the lens of their relationship to food. Some of those relationships are happier than others, but the author's insights give us more than a glimpse into her subjects' lives, but also a look at the subject's culinary times. I'd say Ms. Shapiro, who has authored several other food-related titles, has a hit on her hands that will have many of us begging for more.

This is an interesting look at the food habits and attitudes about food about such different women. I especially liked the section about Barbara Pym. I had heard about the food at the Roosevelt White House, but never realized how really bad it was. As for Helen Gurley Brow, how pathetic!
I didn't know that much about Wordsworth, Lewis or Braun and enjoyed reading about their culinary lives.

Beautiful book. Lovely concept. Great writing! I loved everything about this book. It was so interesting to read about these ladies and the author does such a wonderful job. A page turner!

Would have liked to see more diversity among the women featured. While Shapiro has created a well written and intriguing text, it feels incomplete due to the narrow perspective.