Rating: 
Summary: Funny, funny... at least while we're on top!
Review: A previous reviewer has suggested sharing this book with offline friends... well, we shared this with my mother, who pretended to laugh and then got VERY serious.The thing is, she and her generation grew up admiring this food, idolizing this food, serving this food to their families. This jello-smeared weiner-bespattered stuff WAS the staff of life for a few years there. And that means some people take this real seriously. So definitely enjoy the book...but maybe put it away when older folks come to visit. Someday, somebody will poke fun at us for our obsession with stuff like Calamari and Tiramisu, and the fact that we can't eat anything that's not encased in a "wrap!" How many of today's food choices will be "regrettable" 20 years in the future? And how funny will you find it then...huh, Grampaw???
Rating: 
Summary: The ULTIMATE in GROSSNESS
Review: As a computer worker, I am online for 8 hours and I usually come across interesting and obscure sites. One of these sites is James Lileks' website. This book originated from one of his most popular sections. I remember sending several people the links to the grossest food. Most of them found the illustrations sickening and the descriptions downright revolting. Well, I'm glad that this was finally archived in book form. I purchased several copies and gave them away as presents last Christmas. I recommend this book!
Rating:
Summary: Boneshatteringly Hillarious!
Review: I found the Gallery's online version first, and actually got suckered into buying the book. But it was worth it! This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. The content of the site and the book differ: The book has things that the site doesn't, and vice versa. But here's the best reason to buy this book: One day, when the internet collapses, I'll have this book on my shelf, and I'll still be able to amuse and disgust people with it! Yay!
Rating:
Summary: Utterly hilarious book!
Review: I read this book in one sitting because I couldn't put it down, I kept laughing out loud and yelling at people in the room to come over and read, it was so funny. Lileks is great, his comments are totally loony and right-on. It's easy to laugh in our ultra-modern lives now at these dated, silly recipes and photos, but it's harmless, folks. Don't take it too seriously. It's very, very funny, I gave this book as holidays gifts to people and everyone loved it. I just wished it was longer, I love this stuff. More, please!
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Hilarious
Review: This is one of the funniest books I've ever seen! The scary part is, my grandmother had lots of these photo recipe books in her collection, so the Gallery is both nostalgic and nauseating!
Rating: 
Summary: The pictures speak for themselves.
Review: Here's a book where the pictures speak for themselves. Who doesn't love to look at those old cookbook pamphlets from the 50s? They are fascinating looks at what the food industry wanted people to cook back then. And they are often hilarious from the perspective of the PC, health conscious, era we live in today. But I thought the redundant and sometimes crude comments that the author made about each picture merely pointed out the obvious and were usually not very funny. I would have liked to have seen more pictures without the comments. Some pages have excerpts printed from the actual text of the cookbooks and in most cases those were much more funny than the authors comments. This book also presents a simplified picture of the food habits of Americans in the 50s. I don't doubt that many people tried these recipes to save time in the kitchen. But the 50s was also the start of the gourmet revolution in the U.S. (see Jane and Michael Stern's "American Gourmet" for the story). And for the most part, families in the 50s still cooked the way they had been doing for years (from scratch).
Rating:
Summary: Americana Stewed in its Own Juices
Review: Lileks' book is a clever ruse: constructed like a cookbook, it is instead a pastiche of bizarre recipies and "entertaining ideas" from actual, honest-to-god cookbooks of the time. Most of them appear to come from the '40s through the 1960s, but his website showcases an even broader range of 20th century eatery. God only knows if people actually did eat any of these things back then (I certainly hope not), but it makes those Edward Hopper diners a lot less appealing to me. Divided into sections with names such as "Cooking With 7-Up", "Blur-B-Que", and "Horrors from the Briny Deep" The Gallery is leavened with the wit of our own burgeoning cynicism and mistrust, and that is what makes it so very, very funny. Lurid photographs of these terrible dishes beg for descriptions like "sneeze juice" and my favorite, "scones and Pepsodent in a banana placenta sauce". James Lileks brings our own desire for mockery out with his brilliant witticisms, and we wish we could be that off-the-cuff hilarious. You get the impression a lot of the creations were merely marketing hopefulness: there is a series of A-1 Steak Sauce recipies that have celebrity names attached to them (don't worry; the celebrities are now mercifully long-dead). The 7-Up book prominently places The Uncola in every shot. Hopefully the guys and dolls of that Golden Age were immune to subliminal advertising, but...I suspect they felt that temptation, that desire to be just like the happy people in the Rockwell paintings. Or at least like the blithe cartoon bachelors exclaiming silent joy at yet another platter of meat. The final thread of Lileks' three-pronged assault on our culinary senses is the people. He spends a great deal of time pointing out the implications behind cookbooks titled "How to Cook for a MAN!", and the very strange "10 PM Cookbook", a guide to cocktail-party cuisine that looks like someone threw it up in the bushes out front before the serious drinking got underway. I have never read something so unbelievably funny and yet unmistakably genuine: it's like Mystery Science Theater 3000 used to be, a great poke in the pompous eye of our past. Reading through the website was what prompted me to buy this book. The two complement each other: there are book entries that are well worth the price, website listings that didn't make it into print (but are fun nonetheless), and very little overlap between. I have since donated to Lileks' bandwidth fund and purchased multiple copies to give to friends. Much as I hated using terms like "side-splitting" in this review, I had to: it was simply true that on more than one occasion I have been reduced to tears of laughter, eyes shut tight, gasping for breath as I try to recover from this fantastic book. Visit the website and see for yourself, but don't forget to buy a copy of this fantastic treasure of American history, the other coffee-table book that can sit opposite your copy of The Century and jeer at it.
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Summary: FOOD FLASHBACK! PTA Potluck Suppers of the 1950's - 60's
Review: I picked up this delightful book and started to thumb through the pages. I immediately broke out in a sweat, my heart pounded, and gasped for breath...from laughing. Reading the book late one night, wavy lines appeared, music from the Twilight Zone mysteriously cued up, the flashback had started..... I was transported back in time to the "Milwood Elementary School PTA Potluck Supper". During my formitive years (1958 to 1964) my parents would drag my sister and myself to this dreaded annual event. It was easy to see where some of our classmates had inherited their looks and mannerisms. Parents of all shapes, sizes, smells, and volume---milled about making small talk and giving each other knowing nods. Then there was the food! I swear many of the dishes found in Lilek's book, at one time, found their way to the 12 foot tables which lined the gymnasium. Jello salads of many hues and configerations. Meat dishes twice removed from the dungeons of England. Vegtable & meat aspics which glared back at those who stared. Dishes that actually needed a placard for explanation. ...And Mrs. Trenklemyer...(not a real name) Mrs. Trenklemyer brought the same yellow "chunky" souffle for three years running, and like many of the dishes probably found in the book----Mrs. Trenklemyer would always return home with a full, un-eaten dish. Poor Mr. Trenklemyer!! Bravo to author James Lileks to whip up (pun, sorry) an absolutely wonderful book. American really have to stop and wonder when seeing some of these food dishes: "What the ... were we thinking?" I myself cooked professionally for many years and in that time, amassed a sizable number of cookbooks. But while most cookbooks have a least one recipe, replete with picture that causes us to scratch our heads in bewilderment---Lileks has saved the best(?) for us. The captions and text add the perfect condiment to those savory dishes. WELL DONE!! (sorry, pun again) Can't wait for the "second course" to be published!
Rating:
Summary: Bravado and the Perky Frankfurter Unite!
Review: Oh, this book is truly proof of the old proverb "Bad taste costs no more." First, it contains full color photos of such food oddities as perky frankfurters in a bean casserole. Secondly, the commentary will have you gurgling on the floor of the shuttle bus, er, or wherever else you might be reading this ... It sees my favorite era (for food, fashion, appliance colors, etc.) in an acid light and its humor is such that I would like to lunch with Mr. Lileks at once. Bravo!
Rating:
Summary: LOL, LUIROTF, MLTABOM, LMAO, etc
Review: The only problem with this book is that it's too short. It had me Laughing Out Loud, not just chuckling, and I don't do that much. On the other hand, I don't know if I could have kept up my Laughing Until I Rolled On The Floor much longer. This book is More Laughs Than a Barrel of Monkeys....
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