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Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but...
Review: I enjoyed reading this book. However, I agree with another reviewer who said the Poppy Cannon chapter was too long and the end comparisons between Julia Child and Betty Friedan were a bit forced. I would recommend this book, but don't expect to love it unconditionally. It is informative, but a little weak in structure. For example, The titles of the chapters do not reveal their subjects. It took me a while to figure out that most chapters were about individual food writers. Before that, I wasted time wondering when the subject of the chapter would reveal itself. Suspense is not a plus in non-fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: I was very disappointed.
Review: I thought I would LOVE this book -- I love to cook and to read about the food and cooking industries -- but I really found it boring and hard to get through. The only parts that were worthwhile were the sections on Julia Child and on the evolution of Betty Crocker. But I thought Shapiro went on WAY too long about Poppy Cannon, with too much biographical data that really didn't have anything to do with Cannon's work or her influence on cooking. Too much of the book just seemed to be laundry lists of yucky-sounding '50s recipes and failed products by the food industry. And I thought her efforts in the final chapter to draw similarities between Betty Friedan and Julia Child were bizarre. That made no sense to me at all, and it seemed to me that she only did that to end the book on a provocative, pseudo-political note. I can't help thinking the glowing reviews of this book that appeared in the media were chiefly a result of Shapiro having a lot of good connections.
Rating: 
Summary: Peeling the Stale Images of the '50s
Review: If Laura Shapiro does nothing more (and she does much, much more) it will have been a very valuable service to rescue Poppy Cannon and her Can-Opener Cookbook from the infamy of '50s dreck. The author, in Something From the Oven, does a superb job of taking the idea of a '50s dinner and making it a more complex and multi-layered idea than is usually represented. She peels away all the stereotypes the decade has been dragging behind it and shows the truth. Canned and frozen foods(including my mother's favourite, the TV dinner) make appearances but the author show how women did not blindly follow every marketing scheme tossed at them. And Poppy, along with such luminaries as Betty Crocker and Julia Child, help populate this rich tale with great personalities, in addition to the many anonymous readers and letter writers to women's magazines and food columns. This is a well researched, enjoyable book that makes the 1950s come alive.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable history/sociology for foodies
Review: My mother had no interest in cooking, and she went back to work full-time when I was a young child. As a result, I grew up on boxed mixes: Bisquick, hamburger helper, and plenty of "just add a pound of hamburger" dinners. (How did I become a foodie after that upbringing?)So, on one level I enjoyed this book because it brought back all the weird foods of of childhood, "home cookin', box mix style." The author mentions plenty of dishes that would make us curl our noses today, involving peanut butter, Jello, and miniature marshmallows in configurations that MUST be illegal in some states. However, what I found more interesting was the discussion of how we got from there-to-here. How and why did the food industry shove down the throat of the American housewife all these "convenience foods"? To my surprise, housewives resisted far more strenuously than my mother did. Cake mixes, for example, were roundly ignored until a psychologist realized that women didn't think they were "really cooking" unless they added an egg. (The fact that powdered eggs of the era were pretty awful also had something to do with it.) Also, the food industry was clueless about the products that *worked*: if frozen fish sticks will sell, then why not frozen chicken sticks? or frozen eggplant sticks? A little less interesting (but still worth 3 stars, on its own) are the biographies of several of the people who had an impact on the food consciousness of the 50s and 60s, such as Poppy Cannon (whom I'd never heard of) and Julia Child. From reading the reviews here, I rather expected that I'd find a lot of the data in this book interesting, and I wasn't disappointed. To my surprise, I also found the author to have a delightful sense of humor, and unafraid to insert her own opinions. If you enjoy books about food, history, and how they intersect with people -- such as Uncommon Grounds by Pendergrast, or Kurlansky's Salt -- you'll almost certainly like this book.
Rating:
Summary: From Betty Crocker to Betty Friedan
Review: Something From the Oven covers almost everything about American food culture during the post-World War II years until the mid 1960s. There are accounts of the advent of convenience foods, the literature of food, the rise of cooking shows on TV, and the phenomenon of cooking contests such as the Pillsbury Bake-Off. The topics seem loosely connected, with no particular conclusions drawn. But it's a pop history book, not an academic tome, so sit back and enjoy an entertaining look at food from several historical angles. Shapiro talks about the post-war need for convenience food. At least, manufacturers wanted there to be a need for convenience foods, whether American cooks agreed or not. There were a lot of experiments in the first days. Successful products included concentrated frozen orange juice and fish sticks. Unsuccessful product proposals included canned deep-fried hamburgers and concentrated distilled water. (I suspect if Shapiro is having us on with that last idea.) The section on domestic literature was especially fun, although a lot of it had little to do with food. Shapiro discusses Shirley Jackson, Erma Bombeck, Peg Bracken, Bette MacDonald, Jean Kerr, and the Gilbreths of Cheaper By the Dozen fame, among others. She reveals that there was often a big difference between their supposedly non-fiction works and their actual lives. I look forward to rereading these old favorites with this new information in mind, as well as looking up some authors Shapiro mentions that I was not aware of. The mini-history of Julia Child's career is entertaining, and the extensive bibliography is a treasure trove of further reading ideas. Recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Perfection
Review: This is wonderful social history, witty and original. Laura Shapiro has a big brain and a light touch.
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