Next book

FINDING BETTY CROCKER

THE SECRET LIFE OF AMERICA’S FIRST LADY OF FOOD

Like a Betty Crocker recipe: goes down easy.

Cheerful social history follows the career of General Mills’s long-lived celebrity spokeswoman.

First things first: Betty Crocker isn’t a real person. She was created, in an unwittingly brilliant move, by the publicity department of Washburn Crosby, makers of Gold Medal Flour, after a magazine contest brought in a flood of cooking questions to the company. The letters were answered, but the male publicity director certainly couldn't sign his own name to the responses; thus was Betty created. Her last name was given in honor of then-recently retired company director William G. Crocker, but her first name was chosen simply for its “wholesome” sound. From these simple origins, an empire grew—one supported by a large staff of cooks and home economists who were constantly testing recipes and looking for kitchen innovations. Betty was a radio pioneer, with a first show debuting in 1924 and, later, with her Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air. She went to Hollywood in the ’30s to interview the stars, Marjorie Child Husted being the public face of Betty Crocker on these occasions. Betty assisted homemakers in stretching their budgets during the Great Depression and offered innovative ways to cook with rations during WWII. And while Betty Crocker was always firmly in the woman-as-homemaker camp, she advocated greater recognition for what was often thankless work, creating the Betty Crocker Home Legion. In the 1950s, Betty Crocker offered convenience foods—Bisquick, cake mixes—that matched the shiny new postwar prosperity. Though her popularity hit its high-water mark in the middle of the 20th century, she remains a force even in the General Mills of today. Marks excels in putting her subject in context, and alongside her historical account, she places numerous letters from women who wrote to Betty to ask questions or inform her about their lives.

Like a Betty Crocker recipe: goes down easy.

Pub Date: April 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-7432-6501-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005

Categories:
Next book

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Next book

INTO THE WILD

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990). 

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-679-42850-X

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995

Close Quickview