Written poorly and not sure if Ms. Post was actually as she was portrayed but if so, a horribly pompous lady



Donâ??t read

Until I read THE MAGNIFICENT LIVES OF MARJORIE POST, I knew nothing of Marjorie Post. Yet, many, maybe most of the names and places that Allison Pataki mentions in this book are familiar to me. Initially, that's what made me keep reading. Eventually, though, I became anxious to turn the pages and read about what Marjorie would do next.

For many years, because she was female, Marjorie was denied the chance to even be on the board of Post Cereal (the company her father founded in Battle Creek, Michigan) or General Foods. But she was, in fact, the head of those empires. At one point, she was the richest woman in the United States.

Although Marjorie wasn't smart when it came to picking husbands, she had an astute business sense and was able to foresee what the public would want. For example, she was sure that frozen foods would not only add convenience to meal preparation but would also enable families to eat better food. But she had to fight with her husband for this new idea. He was sure that no one would want a freezer in their home.

When an author writes a note at the end of their book, I read it first, as I did in this case. Therefore, I knew as I read THE MAGNIFICENT LIVES OF MARJORIE POST that it is based on facts and is mostly a true story written in the fictitious first-person voice of Marjorie, herself. She even sounds like I would imagine that Marjorie sounded, e.g., she always speaks of having built or cleaned or installed something when you know darn well that she hired help for these jobs. Then she always claims to be exhausted afterward. But it's easy to forgive her for that when you consider her actual concern for people and her resulting generosity.

Although I can't say I liked everything I learned about Marjorie Post, e.g., she left her small children with a nanny for weeks at a time and she decided to marry men almost as soon as she met them yet could not understand why her marriages never worked, she really was a good rich person who was able to cram more experiences into her life than is normal.

One sign of a good book: it makes you want to find out more. And that's exactly what this book did for me. After I read it I searched the Internet for pictures of Marjorie and her husbands and learned more about her movie star daughter.