What She Ate

Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories

By: Laura Shapiro

Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Laura Shapiro

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2017
One of NPR Fresh Air's "Books to Close Out a Chaotic 2017"
NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2017’s Great Reads

“How lucky for us readers that Shapiro has been listening so perceptively for decades to the language of food.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR Fresh Air

Six “mouthwatering” (Eater.com) short takes on six famous women through the lens of food and cooking, probing how their attitudes toward food can offer surprising new insights into their lives, and our own.

Everyone eats, and food touches on every aspect of our lives—social and cultural, personal and political. Yet most biographers pay little attention to people’s attitudes toward food, as if the great and notable never bothered to think about what was on the plate in front of them. Once we ask how somebody relates to food, we find a whole world of different and provocative ways to understand her. Food stories can be as intimate and revealing as stories of love, work, or coming-of-age. Each of the six women in this entertaining group portrait was famous in her time, and most are still famous in ours; but until now, nobody has told their lives from the point of view of the kitchen and the table.

What She Ate is a lively and unpredictable array of women; what they have in common with one another (and us) is a powerful relationship with food. They include Dorothy Wordsworth, whose food story transforms our picture of the life she shared with her famous poet brother; Rosa Lewis, the Edwardian-era Cockney caterer who cooked her way up the social ladder; Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady and rigorous protector of the worst cook in White House history; Eva Braun, Hitler’s mistress, who challenges our warm associations of food, family, and table; Barbara Pym, whose witty books upend a host of stereotypes about postwar British cuisine; and Helen Gurley Brown, the editor of Cosmopolitan, whose commitment to “having it all” meant having almost nothing on the plate except a supersized portion of diet gelatin.

not my favorite

not my favorite narrator, sadly. Interesting book but I don't know if it was exact what I expected

A joy of a book!

I just loved this book and its stories. History...food...women...what's not to love? I listened to every minute of this book during morning commutes and looked forward to every session.

Too many women.

It could have stopped after Eva Braun. Too long. I liked learning about Eleanor Roosevelt.

Interesting, but don't think the book's premise...

... was proven. I don't see at all how the food these women ate tells their story, except in the most basic way. Seems like Dorothy Wordsworth ate they way she did because that was the food that was available to her. Helen Gurley Brown needed to be thin, so she ate very little. Okay, but why did she need to be thin? I had similar questions of all the other subjects, and never got the answers. Having said this, you do learn about the lives of these women, so it is interesting in that regard. Hmm, perhaps Eleanor Roosevelt wasn't the saint she's often portrayed to be?

Feels like a better title for this book would be, Short Biographies of Remarkable Women, with Information About the Food they Ate. Okay, that's a bit unwieldy, but I hope you see my point.

Good short biographies

enjoyed the book , but the premise of food stories was not fully realized. I would recommended if you want a quick book.