"Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows" illuminates how cooking shows have both reflected and shaped significant changes in American culture and will explore why it is that just about everybody still finds them irresistible. "Cooking is so huge on television today that it has made chefs as famous as movie stars. From the earliest days of flickering black-and-white sets, food shows have infused the tube with class and character that makes this one of the richest genres of programming. It is about time this fact was recognized and explored in depth, with insight and good humor, as it is in Kathleen Collins' Small Screen Cuisine. This is a book not only for foodies, but for anyone with an interest in this vital vein of American popular culture." --Jane and Michael Stern, authors of Jane and Michael Stern's Encyclopedia of Pop Culture (HarperCollins) and American Gourmet (HarperCollins) "In her lively and informative narrative of television food shows, Kathleen Collins captures the phenomenal growth of food as entertainment, what has evolved into a new form of spectator sport in America. The rise of TV celebrity chefs within the context of the nation's growing sophistication about food are stories that needed to be told, and Collins has told them well." --Barbara Haber, food historian, author of From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals" "In her lively and informative narrative of television food shows, Kathleen Collins captures the phenomenal growth of food as entertainment, what has evolved into a new form of spectator sport in America. The rise of TV celebrity chefs within the context of the nation's growing sophistication about food are stories that needed to be told, and Collins has told them well." --Barbara Haber, food historian, author of From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals" "Dione Lucas started them in the 1940s, Julia Child popularized them in the 1960s, and the Food Network hit them out of the park in the 1990s. Since the dawn of TV, cooking shows have captivated Americans, and in Small Screen Cuisine Kathleen Collins explains why. With an easy wit and a "me, too" voice that pulls readers right in, Collins charts the rise of TV cooks as educators, mentors, entertainers and co-conspirators; indeed, as beloved, central and enduring characters in our national pop culture." --Barbara Haber, food historian, author of From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals" "In her lively and informative narrative of television food shows, Kathleen Collins captures the phenomenal growth of food as entertainment, what has evolved into a new form of spectator sport in America. The rise of TV celebrity chefs within the context of the nation's growing sophistication about food are stories that needed to be told, and Collins has told them well." "Dione Lucas started them in the 1940s, Julia Child popularized them in the 1960s, and the Food Network hit them out of the park in the 1990s. Since the dawn of TV, cooking shows have captivated Americans, and in Small Screen Cuisine Kathleen Collins explains why. With an easy wit and a "me, too" voice that pulls readers right in, Collins charts the rise of TV cooks as educators, mentors, entertainers and co-conspirators; indeed, as beloved, central and enduring characters in our national pop culture." Kathleen Collins is an experienced author and researcher who has studied and written about television, media history, popular culture and food. Her work has appeared in the magazines Working Woman and Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture and in the anthology Secrets &Confidences: The Complicated Truth About Women's Friendships (Seal Press: 2004). She has also written encyclopedia entries on a variety of media history topics. She has a Master's degree in journalism with a specialization in cultural reporting and criticism from New York University and a Master's degree in library science from Long Island University. For the past ten years, she has worked as an editorial researcher for a variety of publications including Glamour and Ladies' Home Journal . She is now a librarian and lives in Manhattan. Used Book in Good Condition