Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Pepper: A History of the World's Most Influential Spice by Marjorie Shaffer, 302 pages

The perfect companion to Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World HistoryPepper illuminates the rich history of pepper for a popular audience. Vivid and entertaining, it describes the part pepper played in bringing the Europeans, and later the Americans, to Asia and details the fascinating encounters they had there. As Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds, said, "After reading Marjorie Shaffer's Pepper, you'll reconsider the significance of that grinder or shaker on your dining room table. The pursuit of this wizened berry with the bite changed history in ways you've never dreamed, involving extraordinary voyages, international trade, exotic locales, exploitation, brutality, disease, extinctions, and rebellions, and featuring a set of remarkable characters."

From the abundance of wildlife on the islands of the Indian Ocean, which the Europeans used as stepping stones to India and the East Indies, to colorful accounts of the sultan of Banda Aceh entertaining his European visitors with great banquets and elephant fights, this fascinating book reveals the often surprising story behind one of mankind's most common spices.

I don't care what the reviews say, this was no Salt. It was an okay read but it didn't cover the history near as well as Kurlansky does, the author seemed to concentrate on just one area of pepper's history mainly. 

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