0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
tasty book, 2008-08-31
Good overview of the subject. Interesting tale from a sociological perspective. Excellent translation.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
A wonderful introduction, 2007-08-15
I do not, in general, read history books - social or otherwise but I have been reading a variety of food-related history and culture books. From this context, I found Schivelbush's Tastes of Paradise to be "just right." He provides the broad framework within which he leads the reader through exploration of spices, beer, chocolate, tea, coffee, snuff, opium (and in an afterword, bottled water). Through the study of the place and manner of consumption, he shows some of the effects of these intoxicants on society as well as the effects of history on the use of these intoxicants.
Two points I found particularly of interest were how the fall of Spain as a world power led to hot chocolate's association with women and children. His brief description of opium as an agent of economic/political oppression also caught my attention. What I appreciated the most, however, was the use of art to substantiate his descriptions of place and manner of consumption. The art added a level of substantiation of his arguments that words could not supply.
True, as other reviewers have mentioned, this book does not cover the whole topic nor even treat all intoxicants with the same level of detail. However, he does provide an overview sufficient for many of us which serves well as a base for those who wish to explore further.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A Matter of Usage, 2006-11-29
I must beg to differ with my fellow reviewers about
the merits of this book. I do agree that the treatment
of individual spices is cursory and that the lack of
an index is a disappointment. What I find to praise
here is perhaps the very thing that others find to blame.
Schivelbusch has a point of view that is rooted in
wanting to discover the attitudes, behavior and beliefs
that underlay the European fascination with spicing foods.
He offers a coherent theory-a combination of exoticism and
social climbing. Then examines the consequences of this
fascination in art, literature and society at large.
So this is not an encyclopedia or even a particularly
good guide to sources. Some of that can be better found
in drier accounts like Andrew Dalby's DANGEROUS TASTES.
TASTES OF PARADISE is an accessible and interesting
account of the place that spices, stimulants and intoxicants
have in our world. It is a brisk chronicle of what we have
done with them and what they have done to us, and as that
I recommend it hightly.
--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN 9781601640005
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
Not as piquant as I had hoped..., 2002-02-05
This just had to be a subject right up my alley. Spices? I live in Texas where Tabasco is a condiment (and not a spice) and jalapenos are considered vegetables. Stimulants? I have a coffee cup surgically attached to my hand and Brazilian music runs constantly through my head. Intoxicants? I worship beer. What could be better than a book about all three subjects?Tastes of Paradise considers the social use of and social importance of spices, stimulants, and intoxicants largely from a Western point of view. It covers the use of spices, the coffee-related ethic of the middle class, chocolate, the rise of smoking and snuff, alchohol and the industrial revolution, and the rituals and places surrounding our drinking. What more could we talk about?
Turns out there's a lot more we could talk about, and what would be better is a book that really covers all three subjects. My disappointment boils down to three basic complaints against the book. The first is by far the broadest. In including "a social history" in the title, Schivelbusch focuses almost exclusively on the social effect of the use of the particular stimulant or intoxicant. Nowhere does he discuss the broader history of the item or the impact of the item on society (read "The True History of Chocolate" for a broader and more thorough presentation on chocolate, for example). My second complaint regards his treatment of specific subjects. Spices get remarkably short shrift (twelve pages total; less space than the discussion of drinking rituals; "Nathaniel's Nutmeg" is a better presentation on spices as a whole), and tea is only considered from the point of view of England (I'm pretty sure that the Chinese and Japanese drank tea, and that there's some social history there). Finally, there are more illustrations in this book than in most elementary school readers.
The book is immensely readable, does include -some- interesting illustrations, and covers admirably the impact on western society of the most popular stimulants and intoxicants from the 1600's to the late 1800's. However, there's an enormous amount that isn't there (except for the extra illustrations; those are presented wholesale), and in that the book disappoints.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Left me wanting more, 2001-05-10
And I see from the reviews below that I wasn't the only one. The author has really picked a fascinating subject, and brings it to life, weaving together strands of economics, sociology, geography, and chemistry to explain some of the impacts that these now-commonplace items have had on Western culture. (And what impacts our culture has had on the items - did you know that chocolate was a drink for monks and aristocrats before it became a snack for children?)
But the book is far too short. Many subjects are merely glanced over, and the illustrations, in addition to being so numerous as to be suspected of being filler, are often dark and hard to make out. I would have rather seen the author do a book this size on any one of the various subjects at hand - just coffee, say, or just pepper - and really explored it in depth.