Tastes of Paradise

Author: Wolfgang Schivelbusch
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780679744382
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
From the extravagant use of pepper in the Middle Ages to the Protestant bourgeoisie's love of coffee to the reason why fashionable Europeans stopped sniffing tobacco and starting smoking it, Schivelbusch looks at how the appetite for pleasure transformed the social structure of the Old World. Illustrations.

Dangerous Tastes

Author: Andrew Dalby
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520236745
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
"Dangerous Tastes offers a fresh perspective on these exotic substances and the roles they have played over the centuries. The author shows how each region became part of a worldwide network of trade - with local consequences ranging from disaster to triumph."--BOOK JACKET.

Bobos in Paradise

Author: David Brooks
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416561730
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Book Description
In his bestselling work of “comic sociology,” David Brooks coins a new word, Bobo, to describe today’s upper class—those who have wed the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise to the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture. Their hybrid lifestyle is the atmosphere we breathe, and in this witty and serious look at the cultural consequences of the information age, Brooks has defined a new generation. Do you believe that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but that spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a sign that you are at one with the Zenlike rhythms of nature? Do you work for one of those visionary software companies where people come to work wearing hiking boots and glacier glasses, as if a wall of ice were about to come sliding through the parking lot? If so, you might be a Bobo.

Everything Tastes Better with Garlic

Author: Sara Perry
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 0811838161
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 136

Book Description
Perry shares 65 recipes that celebrate glorious garlic. There's also a handy resource guide with farm and garden sources, a year-round calendar of garlic festivals and tips on interesting books and Web sites.

Birds of Paradise

Author: Anne Malcom
Publisher: Anne Malcom
ISBN: 1386117633
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
He collected beautiful things. Rare things. Ripped them out of their natural environment and preserved them in all of their dead splendor. The problem was I wasn't beautiful. I was all of the hideous and ugly realities of the world packaged into one broken human being. He came to kill me. That was his business. Death. He ripped me out of my natural environment, the prison I'd created, and locked me away with all of his beautiful dead things. I hated him. I still hate him. But if I was given the choice and the ability to leave this cage, come back to life, I'd stay dead. In all of my hideous splendor. Because my murderer can only possess dead things. And I can only be possessed by someone more broken and ugly than me.

Disenchanted Night

Author: Wolfgang Schivelbusch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520203549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
Wolfgang Schivelbusch tells the story of the development of artificial light in the nineteenth century. Not simply a history of a technology, Disenchanted Night reveals the ways that the technology of artificial illumination helped forge modern consciousness. In his strikingly illustrated and lively narrative, Schivelbusch discusses a range of subjects including the political symbolism of streetlamps, the rise of nightlife and the shopwindow, and the importance of the salon in bourgeois culture.

Sweetness and Power

Author: Sidney W. Mintz
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101666641
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
A fascinating persuasive history of how sugar has shaped the world, from European colonies to our modern diets In this eye-opening study, Sidney Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with is use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat. Finally, he considers how sugar has altered work patterns, eating habits, and our diet in modern times. "Like sugar, Mintz is persuasive, and his detailed history is a real treat." -San Francisco Chronicle

Faith, Reason, and the Plague in Seventeenth-century Tuscany

Author: Carlo M. Cipolla
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393000450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 158

Book Description
Recreates the struggles within plague-stricken Italy, relating events that led to a confrontation between the advocates of science and the followers of faith.

A Brief History of Drugs

Author: Antonio Escohotado
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1594775796
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Book Description
A clear-eyed look at the instrumental role drugs have played in our cultural, social, and spiritual development. • First American publication of the surprising European bestseller. • Examines everything from the ancient use of ergot and datura to the modern phenomenon of "designer" drugs such as Ecstasy and crack cocaine. From remotest antiquity to the present era of designer drugs and interdiction, drugs have played a prominent role in the cultural, spiritual, and social development of civilizations. Antonio Escohotado demonstrates how the history of drugs illuminates the history of humanity as he explores the long relationship between mankind and mind-altering substances. Hemp, for example, has been used in India since time immemorial to stimulate mental agility and sexual prowess. Aristotle's disciple Theophrastus testifies to the use of datura by the ancient Greeks and further evidence links the rites at Eleusis to the ingestion of a hallucinogen. Similar examples can be found in cultures as diverse as the Celts, the ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs, and other indigenous peoples around the world. Professor Escohotado also looks at the present-day differences that exist between the more drug-tolerant societies like Holland and Switzerland and countries advocating complete repression of these substances. The author provides a comprehensive analysis of the enormous social costs of the drug war that is coming under increasing fire from all levels of society. Professor Escohotado's work demonstrates that drugs have always existed and been used by societies throughout the world and the contribution they have made to humanity's development has been enormous. The choice we face today is to teach people how to use them correctly or to continue to indiscriminately demonize them. "Just say no," the author says, is not an option. Just say "know" is. Antonio Escohotado is a professor of philosophy and social science methodology at the National University of Distance Education in Madrid, Spain. He travels widely, offering lectures and seminars on the subject of drugs and history.

Herbs, Spices & Flavourings

Author: Tom Stobart
Publisher: Grub Street Publishers
ISBN: 1911621572
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 458

Book Description
The ultimate reference to the tasty ingredients that transform our food from the author of Cook’s Encyclopedia. Tom Stobart’s award-winning Herbs, Spices and Flavourings has long been recognized as the authoritative work on the subject. It is a truly amazing source of information covering, alphabetically, over 400 different herbs, spices, and flavorings found throughout the world and based on the extensive notes he made on his travels in 70 countries. Each entry carries detailed descriptions of the origin, history, magical, medicinal, scientific, and culinary uses, together with a thorough assessment of tastes and effects of cooking, freezing, and pickling. The author assigns the scientific, botanical, native, and popular names for given plants and ingredients making exact identification easy and clearing up any confusions which may exist on differing countries’ names and usages. No other work in print has ever covered this important subject with such exhausting precision, making this work of reference essential for all cooks, gardeners, and horticulturists.