Food touches on every aspect of our lives, and Laura Shapiro's entertaining group portrait cuts new ground by examining six eminent women from the point of view of the kitchen and the table. They include Dorothy Wordsworth, fanatical housekeeper for her famous poet brother; Rosa Lewis, the Edwardian-era Cockney caterer; Eleanor Roosevelt, protector of the worst cook in White House history; Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, who challenges our warm associations of food and family; Barbara Pym, whose witty books upend a host of stereotypes about British cuisine; and Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, whose commitment to "having it all" meant eating platefuls of diet gelatin.