Interesting, BUT it could have used an editor. For example, there were lots of opportunities for more photographs, but the density of the text and the size of the print made the book more difficult to read. Looks matter. There is one illustration of the first Betty Crocker, but none showing how she changed through the ages. There is a discussion of how much fruit and vegetables Americans ate in the 40's, but not information on how much they consume now and how that has changed. However, it was still an interesting look at the role of women in the kitchen over the past 50 years. ( )

I'm giving this four stars because I really enjoyed Laura Shapiro's writing. Clear, precise, easy to read, storytelling. The subject matter was interesting. There was a nice push and pull between the home-cooking aspect vs. The packaged foods aspect. The marketing of these convenience foods was interesting too. It gives one a lot to think about seeing how the convenience food revolution has reverberated down through the years. ( )

From the difficulties of getting consumers to buy frozen dinners, the rise of food advice newspaper columns and the emergence of famous female cooks who specialized in home cooking, as opposed to the trained male chefs showing how to do professional dishes who had been nearly the only experts until the 1950s. The book focuses on the female cook as the one who traditionally cooked for the family.
There's a chapter on the beginnings and entries of The Pillsbury Bake-Off, and a bio of a long-forgotten cookbook author named Poppy Cannon, author of The Can Opener Cookbook and several others, who became famous even though she had little culinary skill and was called out for publishing recipes that didn't work. She once recommended serving Campbell's tomato soup topped with canned fish cakes as the first course at an elegant dinner party.
There's a chapter called "Is She Real?" that addresses product spokeswomen such as Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima, and another chapter that is half Julia Child, and the other half is a bio of Betty Friedan, which is sort of out of place and seems like it's there just because the author wanted to write about her.
Overall, lots of interesting and hard to find information. ( )

I couldn't even finish this. It had such promise. It could have been interesting, but it reads more like a sociology text book. I gave up after 90 pages. ( )

This book was ok. I have other books on the food industry and cooking in America that were more to my liking. This book did contain some gems though. I was irate over what the ad execs were able to do to change the roll of food and cooking in this country. It is a look at how we ended up with such high obesity rates and other degeneration due to eating/cooking habits and convenience.

I thought that the portions about some of the cookbook writers of the time carried on a bit too long.

Reads like a sociology text on the history of food and feminism (perhaps it is). ( )