Review by Booklist Review
As the title suggests, this stirring, highly detailed history of the sugar trade reaches across time and around the globe. Framed by the authors' family connections to the subject, the chapters move from New Guinea, where humans are believed to have first cultivated sugar cane 10,000 years ago, to its spread across the ancient world. With a chapter titled Hell, the authors delve into brutal accounts of the rise of sugar plantations in the Caribbean and Hawaii. In the U.S., where the sugar story centered on Louisiana, even supposedly free states, such as New York, made fortunes in transporting and selling sugar grown by slaves. The book's scope is ambitious, but the clear, informal prose, along with maps and archival illustrations, makes the horrific connections with dramatic immediacy. A closing chapter about how Gandhi's struggle for human rights affected the sugar trade brings in more of the authors' stories. A teacher's guide is available, and classroom discussion is sure to spark intense interest and further research, starting with the fully documented sources at the back.--Rochman, Hazel Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-This meticulously researched, brutally honest, compelling book offers readers a different way to look at many events over the past 200 years or so. The title says it all. From the slave trade through abolition; from revolutions (American, French, and Haitian) to the Louisiana Purchase; from the decline of honey to the rise of saccharine, these events and many more are directly traced to the cultivation and production of sugar cane around the world. With a focus on slavery, Aronson and Budhos demonstrate how this one crop, with its unique harvesting needs, helped to bring about a particularly brutal incarnation of slavery. What makes this such a captivating read is that the book has a jigsaw-puzzle feel as the authors connect seemingly disparate threads and bring readers to the larger picture by highlighting the smaller details hidden within. Primary-source materials such as photographs, interview excerpts, and maps are included throughout, making this an indispensable part of any history collection. The chapter entitled "How We Researched and Wrote This Book" will be of particular interest to teachers and librarians.-Jody Kopple, Shady Hill School, Cambridge, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Exploring world history through the lens of a single food staple, Aronson and Budhos begin by recounting their own family connections to the sugar industry before taking us back to its origins, at least back to when Alexander the Great 'discovered' it in India. They trace how sugar grew in popularity through time and across empires; how the Age of Exploration that began with Columbus also ushered in the transatlantic slave trade to provide labor for vast sugar plantations in the New World; and how it also played a key role in the Age of Enlightenment and the revolutionary fervor that swept the globe. Taking their history full circle, the authors bring sugar into the twentieth century by providing the broader context for their previously shared personal histories. This is fine historical writing: an epic story on a broad canvas that never loses sight of individual moments of human drama; a historical methodology infused with political, intellectual, cultural, and social strands; a complex sequence of cause and effect; an illuminating synthesis of primary and secondary sources; and a thoughtful marriage of words, picture, and design. An authors' note, a timeline, source notes, a bibliography, and an index are appended. JONATHAN HUNT (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
From 1600 to the 1800s, sugar drove the economies of Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa and did more "to reshape the world than any ruler, empire, or war had ever done." Millions of people were taken from Africa and enslaved to work the sugar plantations throughout the Caribbean, worked to death to supply the demand for sugar in Europe. Aronson and Budhos make a case for Africans as not just victims but "true global citizens....the heralds of [our] interconnected world," and they explain how, ironically, the Age of Sugar became the Age of Freedom. Maps, photographs and archival illustrations, all with captions that are informative in their own right, richly complement the text, and superb documentation and an essay addressed to teachers round out the fascinating volume. Covering 10,000 years of history and ranging the world, the story is made personal by the authors' own family stories, their passion for the subject and their conviction that young people are up to the challenge of complex, well-written narrative history. (timelines, Web guide to color images, acknowledgments, notes and sources, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
