This is a completely uninspiring book - mostly It is a list of facts and name dropping with a couple of offset quotes to liven things up. That said, I enjoyed reading it but only because I have been a loyal viewer since almost the beginning of the network.

If you know the TV personalities and their names and remember the old shows like "Ready Set Cook" and "Hot Off the Grill" and the rise (and fall) of "Emeril Live!" you may find it worthwhile.

I think it was really interesting to see how/why the focus of the network changed over the years and to see where on the spectrum my own tastes are.

Bottom line: good for hardcore, longtime Food Network viewers only and iffy even for them. ( )

I enjoy some things on the Food Network much more than I enjoyed this inside-baseball account of its development. ( )

Interesting, but if you're looking for dish, look elsewhere. The book's chief focus is how a small network focused on food and cooking became a media giant. ( )

A in-depth look at the creation of The Food Network to present day. Interesting look at behind the scenes and rise and fall of cooking personalities and the people who got them on the air. ( )

Big personalities, high drama - the extraordinary behind the scenes story...

This is how Allen Salkin describes his book. It couldn't be further from the truth. This is not a book about the "big personalities" of Food Network, at least not the ones you know and love. This is not a book about the stars. This is not a book for a casual fan, or even a devoted fan who watches for the food. This book is probably not what you're expecting.

So what is From Scratch?

It's a laundry list of name drops. The author discusses, at length, who he spoke to when he was writing the book. He also lists who he briefly interviewed and who refused to speak with him. He will go into painstaking detail about who he talked to and when. This carries on throughout the book and crops up again in the very lengthy acknowledgements section at the end.

It's a biography of Emeril Lagasse. As far as the chefs go, Emeril is the main focus. We follow him from the day he was hired to the day he was fired. Not much is left to the imagination. Anecdotes about Emeril are injected into nearly every page, even when they don't fit. Yes, every Food Network fan knows who Emeril is, but that doesn't mean that his name needs to appear on every page of the book.

It's a "what not to do" for starting a business. Salkin goes into depth about how stupid the management was when Food Network started. At one point, staff members were found sleeping on the job and stealing petty cash. The management obviously didn't like that, so they installed cameras to obtain proof and take action. The staff didn't like it, so they got rid of the cameras. Clearly, no problems were solved.

It's an unorganized mess. Nothing is tied together. There are no transitions. When he's actually talking about the chefs, he jumps from Bobby Flay to Tyler Florence to Alton Brown to Ming Tsai and back again with absolutely no connections.

There's a lot wrong with this book. Salkin's insistence on using first names only (except, apparently, when it comes to Nigella Lawson) drove me crazy. It was especially confusing when he was writing about Paula Deen's sons, Bobby and Jamie, around the same time he had been writing about Bobby Flay and Jamie Oliver. He will describe what an executive was wearing in minute detail, from the way her hair was styled to the color of her nail polish to her choice of footwear, but he'll just gloss over that time when Rachael Ray accidentally set Emeril's set on fire. And the ending - Salkin writes a perfect conclusion to the book, then writes a good ten to fifteen pages about the most recent Paula Deen debacle, as if it happened so close to publication that he couldn't even be bothered to work it in to the story. Then there's a half-hearted, completely unsatisfying conclusion involving Ina Garten visiting Bob Tuschman in the hospital and Joe Langhan eating pizza. I literally rolled my eyes upon reading the last page - that's how bad it was.

Nearly everything in this book is irrelevant. It could have been half the length without losing anything important. It's extremely dry reading, to the point where it was a struggle to knock out ten or fifteen pages a night. The only reason I'm giving it two stars is that I learned one good fact - Food Network was started by a regular guy who gets absolutely no credit and absolutely no profits.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. ( )