Sugar
The World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity
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Narrated by:
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Roger Davis
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By:
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James Walvin
About this listen
The modern successor to Sweetness and Power, James Walvin's Sugar is a rich and engaging work on a topic that continues to change our world.
How did a simple commodity, once the prized monopoly of kings and princes, become an essential ingredient in the lives of millions, before mutating yet again into the cause of a global health epidemic?
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 50 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. While sugar consumption remains higher than ever - in some countries as high as 100 lbs. per head per year - some advertisements even proudly proclaim that their product contains no sugar.
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.
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.
©2018 James Walvin (P)2018 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history, food has acted as a catalyst of social change, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is a pithy, entertaining account of how a series of changes---caused, enabled, or influenced by food---has helped to shape and transform societies around the world.
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Flawed, but worthwhile
- By Ary Shalizi on 12-28-17
By: Tom Standage
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Uncommon Grounds
- The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World
- By: Mark Pendergrast
- Narrated by: Matthew Boston
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. In this updated edition of the classic work, Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade, from the disastrous "Coffee Crisis" that caused global prices to plummet to the rise of the Fair Trade movement and the "third-wave" of quality-obsessed coffee connoisseurs.
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Décent overarching review of coffee history digressing into its American commercialization
- By seajaywood on 05-23-19
By: Mark Pendergrast
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Beeronomics
- How Beer Explains the World
- By: Johan Swinnen, Devin Briski
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Beeronomics examines key developments that have moved the brewing industry forward. Its most ubiquitous ingredient, hops, was used by the Hanseatic League to establish the export dominance of Hamburg and Bremen in the 16th century. During the late 19th century, bottom-fermentation led to the spread of industrial lager beer. Industrial innovations in bottling, refrigeration, and TV advertising paved the way for the consolidation and market dominance of major macrobreweries during the 20th century.
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Beer is our world.
- By thfiv on 02-04-20
By: Johan Swinnen, and others
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The Taste of Empire
- How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World
- By: Lizzie Collingham
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Taste of Empire, acclaimed historian Lizzie Collingham tells the story of how the British Empire's quest for food shaped the modern world. Told through 20 meals over the course of 450 years, from the Far East to the New World, Collingham explains how Africans taught Americans how to grow rice, how the East India Company turned opium into tea, and how Americans became the best-fed people in the world.
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Overall really interesting and informative
- By Amazon Customer on 01-01-21
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Bourbon Empire
- The Past and Future of America's Whiskey
- By: Reid Mitenbuler
- Narrated by: Brian O'Neill
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Unraveling the many myths and misconceptions surrounding America's most iconic spirit, Bourbon Empire traces a history that spans frontier rebellion, Gilded Age corruption, and the magic of Madison Avenue. Whiskey has profoundly influenced America's political, economic, and cultural destiny, just as those same factors have inspired the evolution and unique flavor of the whiskey itself.
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Great whiskey history great American history
- By Larry G. on 06-16-15
By: Reid Mitenbuler
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Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey
- An American Heritage
- By: Michael R. Veach
- Narrated by: Travis
- Length: 2 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Its history stretches back almost to the founding of the nation and includes many colorful characters, both well known and obscure, from the hatchet-wielding prohibitionist Carry Nation to George Garvin Brown, who in 1872 created Old Forester, the first bourbon to be sold only by the bottle.
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Nice review
- By Joseph C Wood on 04-28-23
By: Michael R. Veach
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Indian Givers
- How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World
- By: Jack Weatherford
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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After 500 years, the world's huge debt to the wisdom of the Indians of the Americas has finally been explored in all its vivid drama by anthropologist Jack Weatherford. He traces the crucial contributions made by the Indians to our federal system of government, our democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture, and ecology, and in this astonishing, ground-breaking book takes a giant step toward recovering a true American history.
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All things Jack Weatherford
- By Robert on 06-03-10
By: Jack Weatherford
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Chocolate Wars
- The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers
- By: Deborah Cadbury
- Narrated by: Deborah Cadbury
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
With a cast of characters that wouldnt be out of place in a Victorian novel, Chocolate Wars tells the story of the great chocolatier dynasties, through the prism of the Cadburys. Chocolate was consumed unrefined and unprocessed as a rather bitter, fatty drink for the wealthy elite until the late 19th century, when the Swiss discovered a way to blend it with milk and unleashed a product that would conquer every market in the world.
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The World of Chocolate
- By Jean on 11-05-14
By: Deborah Cadbury
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Banana
- The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
- By: Dan Koeppel
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Banana combines a pop-science journey around the globe, a fascinating tale of an iconic American business enterprise, and a look into the alternately tragic and hilarious banana subculture (one does exist) - ultimately taking us to the high-tech labs where new bananas are literally being built in test tubes, in a race to save the world's most beloved fruit.
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Very Good Book - History, Science, and Economics
- By Jose on 11-08-17
By: Dan Koeppel
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The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
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Personal
- By Robert F. Jones on 09-15-17
By: Matt Ridley
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What listeners say about Sugar
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mary K. Bohm
- 08-14-19
Having Trouble Losing Weight?
Sugar by James Walvin will explain the forces tending to make us gain weight and by understanding what's happening will help people to lose weight.
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- Laura Brown
- 05-20-21
A Good Bittersweet Read
loved the pace, information, and narrative storytelling of a substance not thought of but craved by every person.
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- Bigwasatch
- 03-19-22
Epic history of the human use of sugar
This is a detailed and well researched history of the human use of sugar, particularly of cane and beet sugar. It also touches on the more recent use of high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners. It is fascinating and appalling the cost the use and cultivation sugar has had on human civilization and the world environment. I would even dare to say that it is one of the most corrupting agricultural products of all time based on this book. Listen to it and inform yourself about the tragic history of a seemingly benign food product we all have in our pantries.
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1 person found this helpful
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- L. Bergman
- 12-31-18
I should have listened to the other reviews
Many years ago I read William Dufty's fascinating book Sugar Blues, and loved it...in fact, it changed our family's life for the better. So I was intrigued by this book and wanted to see what it was like. The reviews said that it was tedious and repetitive, but I decided to give it a try anyway.
I should have listened. I don't know whether this book was never edited at all, or whether the editor was utterly incompetent, but after about 2 hours I couldn't take it anymore. All this guy does is repeat himself, circle back and restate things, and just when you think he'll move on, he'll say the same thing all over again. Add this to the fact that he doesn't seem to be able to focus on much more than three topics: sugar's role in slavery, sugar's role in the stratification of society, and sugar's effect on health, mostly teeth...and you just can't stay focused at all. All of these are important topics worth knowing about, but the amount of content in this book could have been condensed into about 30 minutes.
Editing. There's a reason why it exists. Never publish a book without it.
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15 people found this helpful