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In the weeks and months after the end of the Spanish-American War, Americans celebrated their nation's triumph by eating sugar. Each of the nation's new imperial possessions, from Puerto Rico to the Philippines, had the potential for vastly expanding sugar production. As victory parties and commemorations prominently featured candy and other sweets, Americans saw sugar as the reward for their global ambitions. April Merleaux demonstrates that trade policies and consumer cultures are as crucial to understanding U.S. empire as military or diplomatic interventions. As the nation's sweet tooth grew, people debated tariffs, immigration, and empire, all of which hastened the nation's rise as an international power. These dynamics played out in the bureaucracies of Washington, D.C., in the pages of local newspapers, and at local candy counters. Merleaux argues that ideas about race and civilization shaped sugar markets since government policies and business practices hinged on the racial characteristics of the people who worked the land and consumed its products. Connecting the history of sugar to its producers, consumers, and policy makers, Merleaux shows that the modern American sugar habit took shape in the shadow of a growing empire.
How did sugar grow from prize to pariah? Acclaimed historian James Walvin looks at the history of our collective sweet tooth, beginning with the sugar grown by enslaved people who had been uprooted and shipped vast distances to undertake the grueling labor on plantations. The combination of sugar and slavery would transform the tastes of the Western world. Prior to 1600, sugar was a costly luxury, the domain of the rich. But with the rise of the sugar colonies in the New World over the following century, sugar became cheap, ubiquitous, and an everyday necessity. Less than fifty years ago, few people suggested that sugar posed a global health problem. And yet today, sugar is regularly denounced as a dangerous addiction, on a par with tobacco. Masterfully insightful and probing, James Walvin reveals the relationship between society and sweetness over the past two centuries— and how it explains our conflicted relationship with sugar today.
Nicholas Money gives us a history of our interactions with one of the most important organisms in the world--yeast.
Publisher 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
This dramatic history of an ingredient that changed the world “offers up a number of fascinating stories” (The New York Times Book Review). Sugar explores the history behind the sweetness, revealing, among other stories, how powerful American interests deposed Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii; how Hitler tried to ensure a steady supply of beet sugar when enemies threatened to cut off Germany’s supply of overseas cane sugar; and how South Africa established a domestic ethanol industry in the wake of anti-apartheid sugar embargos. The book follows the role of sugar in world events and in individual lives up to the present day, showing how it made eating on the run socially acceptable and played an integral role in today’s fast food culture and obesity epidemic. Impressively researched and commandingly written, Sugar will forever change perceptions of this tempting treat. “A highly readable and comprehensive study of a remarkable product.” —The Independent “Epic in ambition and briskly written.” —The Wall Street Journal “Readers will never again be able to casually sweeten tea or eat sweets without considering the long and fascinating history of sugar.” —Booklist
From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.
How did Cuba's long-established sugar trade result in the development of an agriculture that benefited consumers abroad at the dire expense of Cubans at home? In this history of Cuba, Louis A. Perez proposes a new Cuban counterpoint: rice, a staple central to the island's cuisine, and sugar, which dominated an export economy 150 years in the making. In the dynamic between the two, dependency on food imports—a signal feature of the Cuban economy—was set in place. Cuban efforts to diversify the economy through expanded rice production were met with keen resistance by U.S. rice producers, who were as reliant on the Cuban market as sugar growers were on the U.S. market. U.S. growers prepared to retaliate by cutting the sugar quota in a struggle to control Cuban rice markets. Perez's chronicle culminates in the 1950s, a period of deepening revolutionary tensions on the island, as U.S. rice producers and their allies in Congress clashed with Cuban producers supported by the government of Fulgencio Batista. U.S. interests prevailed—a success, Perez argues, that contributed to undermining Batista's capacity to govern. Cuba's inability to develop self-sufficiency in rice production persists long after the triumph of the Cuban revolution. Cuba continues to import rice, but, in the face of the U.S. embargo, mainly from Asia. U.S. rice growers wait impatiently to recover the Cuban market.