Spam the Cookbook

Dating from the 1930s, featured in the Smithsonian, rocketing to unimagined heights of success and staying there for 60 years who would have guessed that ""shoulder meat left over from the pork industry,"" blended with ham and canned as a luncheon meat would enjoy such glory? In SPAM: The Cookbook, Marguerite Patten (Marguerite Patten's Post-War Kitchen) offers 20 recipes (Thai SPAM Cakes; SPAM steaks in Port Wine); a concise history of SPAM (the visionary Jay C. Hormel beat the odds when he sold his brainchild to his father and then the world; by 1944, 90% of Hormel canned foods ""were exported to various theaters of war""); quotes and excerpts from Nikita Kruschev, Monty Python and fan clubs; and much more world-wide SPAMiana. Pop-culture lovers will drool. Photos. ( July)